The Multimode Estimation Modeling for Flight Delay of a Busy Hub-Airport in Flight Chain

Flight delay is the root of Delay Propagation, while delay propagated within a Flight Chain. Busy hub-airport plays an important role in a Flight Chain, since the Initial Delay often happens there. To research more possible impacting factors in the Flight Chain, a busy hub-airport is chosen as the object in this research. After analyzing the complex and uncertain relationship between flight delays and all possible impacting factors, Bayesian network (BN) adapt to model and estimate about flight delay in a busy hub-airport. We proposed two learning methods with three different models. Model I is an estimation model for Arrival Delay based on parameter learning of BN with the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. Model II is estimation model for Arrival Delay based on structure learning of BN with K2 algorithm. The model learned by K2 is proved more suitable for modeling the estimation of flight delay, with a higher estimating correct rate than Model I. Then Model II is estimation model for Departure Delay with the same algorithm of Model II.