Efficient Market-Based Air Traffic Flow Control with Competing Airlines

This work proposes a novel aggregate air traffic flow control model for competitive airlines with private preference information over traffic control actions. A capacity resource market is presented for which guarantees of efficiency exist for price-taking airlines. A distributed market algorithm is developed whose results are always weakly preferred by all airlines over a central solution that does not take private information into account. The flow model incorporates many key characteristics of air traffic flow control which include measuring costs as deviations from a predetermined schedule, allowing both en route and airport capacity restrictions and modifying route capacity due to weather disruptions. Simulation results show the feasibility of solving the air traffic flow control problem using markets on a network that covers the northeastern region of the US airspace over three hours