CRCS Lunch Seminar
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Time: 11:45am – 1:15pm
Place: Maxwell Dworkin 2nd Floor Lounge Area
Speakers: Douglas Fearing, MIT
Title: The Case for Coordination: Equity, Efficiency, and Passenger Impacts in Air Traffic Flow Management
Abstract: Increasing congestion throughout the National Air Transportation System, both at airports and en route, has led to significant flight and passenger delays. Estimates for the annual cost of delays range from $10 billion to $19 billion for airlines and from $4 billion to $12 billion for passengers. In the U.S., responsibility for managing congestion falls to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In order to maintain safety requirements, the FAA utilizes two types of interventions: Traffic Flow Management (TFM) for strategic control and Air Traffic Control (ATC) for en route interventions.
Since the introduction of the Ground Delay Program (GDP) in 1981, there has been significant research into Traffic Flow Management (TFM) programs, but only one significant change to the manner in which the FAA allocates controlled capacities. In the late 1990′s the FAA and airlines jointly introduced Collaborative Decision Making. The ongoing success of this program is strongly tied to its focus on balancing responsibilities between the FAA and airlines. We believe this focus, which has been lacking in much of the academic research over the past 15 years, is a key criterion for the success of any proposed TFM enhancement. The goals of the FAA are not in conflict with those of airlines; system efficiency improvements are highly beneficial to airlines both in terms of increased revenues and decreased costs. The key challenge is providing these benefits in a way that maintains the highly sensitive competitive balance within the airline
industry.
In our work, we develop a multi-criterion optimization model for Traffic Flow Management (TFM) with the intent to simultaneously: i) improve system efficiency, ii) maintain equity between airlines, and iii) reduce passenger delays and disruptions. Achieving these goals entails modeling challenges due to complex and conflicting objectives, computational challenges due to the size and scope of the traffic flow management problem, and evaluation challenges due to the dynamic nature of the air transportation system. We believe this model will allow benefits to airlines and passengers to be balanced against equity considerations in order to facilitate airline acceptance.
LOCATION:Maxwell Dworkin 2nd Floor Lounge Area STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20100324T154500Z DTEND:20100324T171500Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR