Eric Feron
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
MIT
The air traffic has been growing rapidly since the Airline Deregulation Act
of 1978. As a consequence of this and the concentration of air traffic
on fewer origin-destination pairs, the air transportation network is
becoming progressively more congested, with a steady increase of gate-to-gate
flight times. The most tangible source of traffic congestion in the United
States is the airports. In this talk, we will identify the main constraints
that drive airport dynamics based on experimental data and on-site
investigations. We will also discuss possible control points for tactical
airport traffic management, and desirable airport control objectives. We
will show that simple queuing models may capture well the macroscopic
behavior of a busy airport such as Logan Airport. These models will be used
to evaluate the economical and environmental impact of closed-loop gate hold
strategies to control taxiway congestion while preserving airport capacity
during the departure process.