Single Airport Ground Holding Problem - Benefits Of Modeling Uncertainty And Risk

Air travel has become a primary mode of travel for many individuals and, with increased demand for flights, airports are quickly reaching their capacities. Individual airline schedules are usually constructed to provide flexibility and convenience to the passenger, but they must also adhere to the capacity of each airport. Under poor weather conditions, which usually are called irregular operations, an airport's arrival capacity, or airport acceptance rate (AAR), can be severely affected. Under these circumstances, we look for ground holding policies which hold certain aircraft at their originating or upline stations in order to reduce the more expensive airspace delays incurred when an aircraft circles, waiting for available arrival runway capacity.The Ground Holding Problem (GHP) has been researched actively over the past 10 years, including work on both static and dynamic, and single and multiple airport, versions of the problem. Much of this work has presented efficient methods for solving each version of the GHP. We provide a foundation for this research by presenting the underlying motivation for evaluating the GHP using stochastic programming as opposed to using a deterministic or expected value approach. Also, the majority of past work has centered on using an objective that minimizes "total delay costs." We will introduce risk-aversion objectives to quantify penalties for deviating from expected runway capacities.