An assessment of the impact of demand management strategies for efficient allocation of airport capacity

Airport demand management strategies have the potential to mitigate congestion and delays. However, the extent to which the delays can be reduced using such strategies is not clear. In this paper, we develop a bound on the minimum possible level of delays that can be achieved using these strategies. We solve the aggregated timetable development and fleet assignment problem to minimise the system-wide delays assuming a single monopolistic carrier that satisfies all the passenger demand in the USA and maintains the same level-of-service as achieved with the current revenue management practices of individual carriers. The problem is formulated as a large-scale, integer linear programming model and solved using linear programming relaxation and heuristics. A network delay simulator is used for calculating the delays under different capacity scenarios. The results indicate the large inefficiencies in the usage of airport infrastructure in the domestic US caused by competitive airline scheduling decisions.