Simulation Analysis of the Effect of Relaxation Time on Flight Delays Propagation

Relaxation time of flights is one of the main factors that affect the diffusion of flight delays, but the specific relationship between them is ambiguous.？Gaining a clear idea of their relationship conduces to the control of flight delays.？Through the establishment of the aviation network model and simulation analysis of the effect of relaxation time on delay spread, it can be found that the relaxation time is inversely proportional to the total delay time and the number of airports that have been delayed due to the delay spread, and there is no evident linear relationship between the relaxation time and the average delay time.？This demonstrates that increasing the relaxation time properly can reduce the propagation of flight delays and improve the punctuality rate of flights.

FLIGHT CLASSIFICATION MODEL BASED ON TRANSITIVE CLOSURE ALGORITHM AND APPLICATION TO FLIGHT SEQUENCING PROBLEM

A new arrival and departure flight classification method based on the transitive closure algorithm （TCA） is proposed. Firstly, the fuzzy set theory and the transitive closure algorithm are introduced. Then four different factors are selected to establish the flight classification model and a method is given to calculate the delay cost for each class. Finally, the proposed method is implemented in the sequencing problems of flights in a terminal area, and results are compared with that of the traditional classification method（TCM）. Results show that the new classification model is effective in reducing the expenses of flight delays, thus optimizing the sequences of arrival and departure flights, and improving the efficiency of air traffic control.

Bilevel Programming Model for Joint Scheduling of Arrival and Departure Flights Based on Traffic Scenario

In order to meet the needs of collaborative decision making,considering the different demands of air traffic control units,airlines,airports and passengers in various traffic scenarios,the joint scheduling problem of arrival and departure flights is studied systematically.According to the matching degree of capacity and flow,it is determined that the traffic state of arrival/departure operation in a certain period is peak or off-peak.The demands of all parties in each traffic state are analyzed,and the mathematical models of arrival/departure flight scheduling in each traffic state are established.Aiming at the four kinds of joint operation traffic scenarios of arrival and departure,the corresponding bi-level programming models for joint scheduling of arrival and departure flights are established,respectively,and the elitism genetic algorithm is designed to solve the models.The results show that:Compared with the first-come-firstserved method,in the scenarios of arrival peak&departure off-peak and arrival peak&departure peak,the departure flight equilibrium satisfaction is improved,and the runway occupation time of departure flight flow is reduced by 38.8%.In the scenarios of arrival off-peak&departure off-peak and departure peak&arrival off-peak,the arrival flight equilibrium delay time is significantly reduced,the departure flight equilibrium satisfaction is improved by 77.6%,and the runway occupation time of departure flight flow is reduced by 46.6%.Compared with other four kinds of strategies,the optimal scheduling method can better balance fairness and efficiency,so the scheduling results are more reasonable.

Characterizing Flight Delay Profiles with a Tensor Factorization Framework

In air traffic and airport management,experience gained from past operations is crucial in designing appropriate strategies when facing a new scenario.Therefore,this paper uses massive spatiotemporal flight data to identify similar traffic and delay patterns,which become critical for gaining a better understanding of the aviation system and relevant decision-making.However,as the datasets imply complex dependence and higher-order interactions between space and time,retrieving significant features and patterns can be very challenging.In this paper,we propose a probabilistic framework for highdimensional historical flight data.We apply a latent class model and demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework using air traffic data from 224 airports in China during 2014–2017.We find that profiles of each dimension can be clearly divided into various patterns representing different regular operations.To prove the effectiveness of these patterns,we then create an estimation model that provides preliminary judgment on the airport delay level.The outcomes of this study can help airport operators and air traffic managers better understand air traffic and delay patterns according to the experience gained from historical scenarios.

A geographical and operational deep graph convolutional approach for flight delay prediction

Flight delay prediction has attracted great interest in civil aviation community due to its significant role in airline planning,flight scheduling,airport operation,and passenger service.Flight delay is affected by numerous factors and irregularly propagates in air transportation networks owing to flight connectivity,which brings critical challenges to accurate flight delay prediction.In recent years,Graph Convolutional Networks(GCNs)have become popular in flight delay prediction due to the advantage in extracting complicated relationships.However,most of the existing GCN-based methods have failed to effectively capture the spatial-temporal information in flight delay prediction.In this paper,a Geographical and Operational Graph Convolutional Network(GOGCN)is proposed for multi-airport flight delay prediction.The GOGCN is a GCN-based spatial-temporal model that improves node feature representation ability with geographical and operational spatial-temporal interactions in a graph.Specifically,an operational aggregator is designed to extract global operational information based on the graph structure,while a geographical aggregator is developed to capture the similar nature among spatially close airports.Extensive experiments on a real-world dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods with a satisfying accuracy improvement.

Collaborative slot secondary allocation based on flight wave operation

Purpose-Flights are often delayed owing to emergencies.This paper proposes a cooperative slot secondary assignment(CSSA)model based on a collaborative decision-making(CDM)mechanism,and the operation mode of flight waves designs an improved intelligent algorithm to solve the optimal flight plan and minimize the total delay of passenger time.Design/methodology/approach-Taking passenger delays,transfer delays and flight cancellation delays into account comprehensively,the total delay time is minimized as the objective function.The model is verified by a linear solver and compared with the first come first service(FCFS)method to prove the effectiveness of the method.An improved adaptive partheno-genetic algorithm(IAPGA)using hierarchical serial number coding was designed,combining elite and roulette strategies to find pareto solutions.Findings-Comparing and analyzing the experimental results of various scale examples,the optimization model in this paper is greatly optimized compared to the FCFS method in terms of total delay time,and the IAPGA algorithm is better than the algorithm before in terms of solution performance and solution set quality.Originality/value-Based on the actual situation,this paper considers the operation mode of flight waves.In addition,the flight plan solved by the model can be guaranteed in terms of feasibility and effectiveness,which can provide airlines with reasonable decision-making opinions when reassigning slot resources.

Locally generalised multi-agent reinforcement learning for demand and capacity balancing with customised neural networks

Reinforcement Learning(RL)techniques are being studied to solve the Demand and Capacity Balancing(DCB)problems to fully exploit their computational performance.A locally gen-eralised Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning(MARL)for real-world DCB problems is proposed.The proposed method can deploy trained agents directly to unseen scenarios in a specific Air Traffic Flow Management(ATFM)region to quickly obtain a satisfactory solution.In this method,agents of all flights in a scenario form a multi-agent decision-making system based on partial observation.The trained agent with the customised neural network can be deployed directly on the corresponding flight,allowing it to solve the DCB problem jointly.A cooperation coefficient is introduced in the reward function,which is used to adjust the agent’s cooperation preference in a multi-agent system,thereby controlling the distribution of flight delay time allocation.A multi-iteration mechanism is designed for the DCB decision-making framework to deal with problems arising from non-stationarity in MARL and to ensure that all hotspots are eliminated.Experiments based on large-scale high-complexity real-world scenarios are conducted to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the method.From a statis-tical point of view,it is proven that the proposed method is generalised within the scope of the flights and sectors of interest,and its optimisation performance outperforms the standard computer-assisted slot allocation and state-of-the-art RL-based DCB methods.The sensitivity analysis preliminarily reveals the effect of the cooperation coefficient on delay time allocation.

Models of Choosing the Financial Compensation Strategy for Flight Delay

At present, most airlines adopted generally the same amount of compensa- tion strategy when needing to provide financial compensation to all flight delay passengers. However, due to the existence of differences in travel time value, ticket fare, as well as the expectation of compensation for flight delays, the gap between the effect of same amount of compensation and many passengers＇ （especially the high-value ones） expectations is large, it results in that airlines need to pay higher cost of compensation, but the total effect of compensation for passengers are not better. This paper advanced four financial com- pensation strategies for flight delays, summarized their own characteristics, and took into account the interests of both airlines and passengers, built the optimization models of the four financial compensation strategies under the restriction of the airline＇s compensation cost and on the goal of the maximum total effectiveness of the financial compensation to all passengers. Finally, based on the specific circumstances of the flight delays, the paper discussed the method for airline to choose the optimal financial compensation strategy through solving four models and comparing the compensation effectiveness.