Travel Behavior

Operational Consequences of Alternative Airport Demand Management Policies

Mark Hansen
Zhang, Yu
2005

The current demand management policy at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) New York, must be changed in 2007 under the provision of the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century of April 2000 (AIR-21). As a preliminary step for developing a new policy, this study considered how past policies, along with other factors, have affected operational performance at LGA. The interaction between LGA and the rest of the aviation system was also investigated by estimating simultaneous equations of average delay for LGA and the National Airspace System (NAS) by using two-stage least...

Going South?

Mark Hansen
Hsiao, Chieh Yu
2005
The recent increase in flight delays in the U.S. domestic system is analyzed by estimating an econometric model of average daily delay that incorporates the effects of arrival queuing, convective weather, terminal weather conditions, seasonal effects, and secular effects (trends in delays not accounted for by other variables). From the estimation results it was possible to quantify some sources of higher delays in late 2003 and early 2004 and track changes in delays that are not attributable to major causal factors. Results suggest that when these factors are controlled for, delays decreased...

Scenario-Based Management of Air Traffic Flow

Liu, Pei-Chen Barry
Mark Hansen
Mukherjee, Avijit
2006
Recent studies of the single-airport ground-holding problem use static or dynamic optimization to manage uncertainty about future airport capacities. Scenario trees of airport capacity profiles provide the basis for formulating multistage recourse problems. In this paper, methodologies are presented for generating scenario trees from empirical data, and the performance of scenario-based models is examined with the scenario trees. Most U.S. airports have capacity profiles that can be classified into some nominal scenarios, and for many airports, these scenarios can be naturally combined into...

Econometric Analysis of U.S. Airline Flight Delays with Time-of-Day Effects

Hsiao, Chieh-Yu
Mark Hansen
2006
An econometric model of average daily delay is formulated and estimated to analyze flight delay in the U.S. domestic system. The model considers the effects of arrival queuing, volume, terminal weather, en route weather, seasonal effects, and secular effects. In particular, the time-of-day effects of arrival queuing, the effects of scheduled arrivals, and the interaction between scheduled arrivals and weather conditions are investigated. The estimation results suggest that (a) queuing has a greater delay impact in the morning than in the afternoon or evening (one unit of morning queuing delay...

Scenario-Free Sequential Decision Model for the Single Airport Ground Holding Problem

Liu, Pei-Chen Barry
Mark Hansen
2007

This paper aims to advance the support of decision-making in air traffic flow management under uncertainty with a focus on the single airport ground holding problem (SAGHP). Learning from the shortcomings of the scenario-based models for SAGHP, which address uncertainty using probabilistic capacity scenarios, the paper develops a sequential decision model that is not limited by a small set of scenarios. The paper presents computational strategies and demonstrates the computational feasibility of the model.

Multivariate Analysis of the Impacts of NAS Investments: A Case Study of a Capacity Expansion at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport

Mark Hansen
Wei, Wenbin
2006

Multivariate statistical analysis is used to estimate the impacts of a major capacity expansion at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The model relates the Daily Flight Time Index (DFTI) to demand, weather, origin airport congestion, and the expansion itself. The effect of the capacity expansion on DFTI is found to depend strongly on visibility. On average, the index in the post-expansion period is 1.3min less as a consequence of investment. This change includes a larger reduction in departure delay that is offset by an increase in taxi time. Moreover, the reduction caused by the...

Scenario-based Air Traffic Flow Management: From Theory to Practice

Liu, Pei-chen Barry
Mark Hansen
Mukherjee, Avijit
2008

Recent developments in solving the single airport ground holding problem use static or dynamic optimization to manage uncertainty about how airport capacities will evolve. Both static and dynamic models involve the use of scenarios that depict different possible capacity evolutions. Dynamic models also require scenario trees featuring branch points where previously similar capacity profiles become distinct. In this paper, we present methodologies for generating and using scenario trees from empirical data and examine the performance of scenario-based models in a real-world setting. We find...

Analyzing System Impact of En Route Delays

Mark Hansen
Yin, Huifang
2008

This paper will offer a new perspective on evaluating en route performance by exploring the relationship between en route delay and airport arrival delay. The paper proposes a simple method for assessing the multiplier for a particular en route delay event, and illustrate the procedure for a sample of flights and airports. The findings indicate that the multiplier varies vastly for en route delays of comparable length. These differences derive from the interaction between en route delay and terminal queuing processes.

Use of Queuing Models to Estimate Delay Savings from 4D Trajectory Precision

Mark Hansen
Nikoleris, Tasos
Lovell, David
Vlachou, Kleoniki
Odoni, Amedeo
2009

The potential benefit from introducing trajectory based operations into the NAS is estimated in this paper. Delay predictions of a stochastic and a deterministic queuing model, which represent high and low levels of trajectory uncertainty, are compared. It is found that delay savings are on the order of 35% in the average case, Delay predictions from the various models are found to be strongly collinear over a wide range of congestion levels.

Value of Flight Cancellation and Cancellation Decision Modeling: Ground Delay Program Postoperation Study

Xiong, Jing
Mark Hansen
2009

Flight cancellations are costly to airlines and air passengers, but the question is, how costly? Little quantitative analysis about cancellation cost has been done, and current studies are focused on flight delays. However, cancellations should be studied to supplement delay metrics to assess the performance of the National Airspace System, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of air traffic management. Postoperation data of the ground delay program were explored, and relative value of cancellations in terms of delay savings were inferred. Two cancellation metrics were developed for...