Abstract
Being a cost-efficient solution for alleviating the traffic congestion in airspace, Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) has drawn more attentions from not only air traffic controllers but also researchers in the field of Air Traffic Management (ATM). Among other ATFM initiatives, it is believed that Ground Delay Program (GDP) could be effectively applied to reduce the congestion particularly in the relatively small airspace with dense traffic demand. This paper introduces a novel way that suggests flights to be delayed on the departing airports together with amount of the delays (in time) for those flights to be delayed. Adopting a fast-time simulation for predicting airspace delay of each flight for a given flight plan, the method is designed to iteratively and incrementally adjust the departure times in the plan towards reducing total airspace delays. Applying the method to Jeju airport with a hypothetically high demand, the paper demonstrates the airspace delay could be significantly reduced by applying GDP at Gimpo airport where more than 60% of Juju-bound flights departure. Although the simulation model needs to be calibrated and validated for the real-world application, the results clearly shows that the approach can possibly implemented as a tool for preparing the daily plan at the pre-tactical stage defined in the ICAO ATFM manual.
