The Static Stochastic Ground-Holding Problem with Aggregate Demands
Ball, Hoffman, Odoni, Rifkin
January 1999
Abstract
The ground delay program is a mechanism used to decrease the rate of incoming flights
into an airport when it is projected that arrival demand in to the airport will exceed capacity.
In this paper, we present an integer programming model for plannning ground delay programs.
The model considers a stochastic capacity profile which is represented by a set of airport capacity
scenarios and their probabilities. Both the demand on the airport and the output of the model are
represented at an aggregate level in terms or number of flights per unit time. This allows the model
to be used tin conjunction with arbitrarily complex preprocesses for allocating individual flights
to slots. It was specifically designed to be used in the the Collaborative Decision Making setting
where individual flight assignments result from an iterative process involving both the airlines and
traffic flow managers. We show that the linear programming dual of the model can be transformed into
a network flow problem. This implies that the integer program can be solved efficiently using
linear programming or network flow models.