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Ground Delay Program Planning Under Uncertainty Based on the Ration-by-Distance Principle

Robert H. Smith School of Business and Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
Metron Aviation, Inc., Dulles, Virginia 20166
University Affiliated Research Center, University of California (Santa Cruz), Moffett Field, California 94035
mball{at}rhsmith.umd.edu
hoffman{at}metronaviation.com
avijit{at}ucsc.edu

This paper presents ration-by-distance (RBD), a new allocation method to be used in planning ground delay programs (GDPs) for traffic flow management. It is shown that RBD minimizes total expected delay, under certain assumptions related to the manner in which GDPs are dynamically controlled. On the other hand, RBD taken to the extreme has poor characteristics with respect to the equity of the allocation it produces. To address this issue, we propose a constrained version of RBD as a practical alternative to allocation procedures used in operations today. It is shown that this algorithm has superior overall performance in terms of efficiency and equity relative to existing procedures.

Key Words: air traffic management; stochastic programming; ground delay programs; equity
History: Received: November 2007; revised: May 2009; accepted: May 2009.