Fast-time simulations of Detroit Airport operations for evaluating performance in the presence of uncertainties

The airport environment is a very uncertain environment, primarily due to large variations in performance and efficiency. While the presence of uncertainties and their influence on airport operations has been recognized, their characteristics and impacts have not been studied in detail. This paper investigates the impacts of uncertainty on airport performance through fast-time simulations using SIMMOD. Various uncertainty sources, such as pushback times, runway exit times, taxi speeds, and runway separation times, are evaluated with actual flight schedules at Detroit International Airport. The simulations show that the ground delay increases with an increase in uncertainty level for most scenarios. The paper also shows that surface traffic optimization based on a deterministic model can still be valid in the presence of certain types of uncertainties.