Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule Perturbation Recovery and Airport ...

180 Pages·2008·1.15 MB·English

Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule
Perturbation Recovery and Airport Congestion
Mitigation under Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)

by
Yu Zhang
Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule
Perturbation Recovery and Airport Congestion
Mitigation under Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)

by
Yu Zhang
Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule Perturbation Recovery and Airport
Congestion Mitigation under Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)

by
Yu Zhang

B.S. (Southeast University) 1997
M.S. (University of California, Berkeley) 2003

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Engineering-Civil and Environmental Engineering
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley
Committee in charge:
Professor Mark M. Hansen, Chair
Professor Dorit S. Hochbaum
Professor Martin Wachs

Fall 2008
The dissertation of Yu Zhang is approved:

Chair _______________________________________ Date ________________
_______________________________________ Date ________________
_______________________________________ Date ________________

University of California, Berkeley
Fall 2008
Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule Perturbation Recovery and
Airport Congestion Mitigation under Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)

Copyright 2008
by
Yu Zhang
Abstract
Real-time Inter-modal Strategies for Airline Schedule Perturbation Recovery and Airport
Congestion Mitigation under Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)

by
Yu Zhang
Doctor of Philosophy in Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Mark M. Hansen, Chair

The main goal of this dissertation is to propose a new analytical framework and
supporting optimization models that will encourage the aviation industry to incorporate
alternative transportation modes when major airports in the system encounter temporary
closures or severe capacity deficiencies. This framework can provide a way to reduce
passenger disutility due to delay and misconnection, to help airlines reduce operating cost
and recover schedule more promptly, and to assist air traffic flow managers to utilize and
distribute scarce resources more efficiently and equitably.

Airline delays cost billions of dollars each year in the U.S. Most of the delays occur on
days when airlines’ planned schedules are disrupted and off-schedule operations (OSO)
have to be performed. One main reason for the disruptions is airspace capacity shortfall
caused by adverse weather or other temporary events. It is suggested in this study that
when there is a significant capacity shortfall, airlines with hub-and-spoke networks could
incorporate ground transport modes into their operations. Real-time inter-modalism
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includes the substitution of flights by surface vehicle trips and, when the hub is part of a
regional airport system, the use of inter-airport ground transport to enable diversion of
flights to alternate hubs. Real-time inter-modalism is different from the air-rail
cooperation currently practiced in Europe because it is only triggered by severe demand
and supply imbalance at major hub airports and emphasizes operational integration of
existing airside and ground transport capabilities rather than major capital investment.

In the first strategy, Real-time Inter-Modal Substitution (RTIMS), airlines substitute
short-haul flights with ground transport modes during severe disruptions. In this way,
scarce arrival and departure slots can be used by long-haul, large jets with more
passengers or other high-priority flights. As a first step, a deterministic queuing analysis
is used to identify flights whose substitution by ground transport would result in net time
savings, based on a comparison of the reduced flight delay and increased line-haul time
that would result. Then for arrivals and departures of one airline, a mathematical
programming model is constructed to help the airline make decisions on whether to
cancel flights, substitute them with motor coaches, or assign them delays commensurate
with airport capacity constraints. An approximation algorithm is proposed to reduce the
substantial computation time required to solve large-scale non-linear integer
programming problems. A set of experiments are designed to assess potential savings
from ground transport substitution. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to investigate the
effects of severities of capacity shortfalls, passenger value of time, distances of short-haul
spoke airports, load factor of the flights, schedule peaking, and connecting patterns of
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transfer passengers on the optimization results and the savings from inter-modal
substitution.

Many major metropolitan areas are served by one or two major hub airports and several
surrounding regional airports, which collectively form a regional airport system. Some of
the regional airports are underutilized and contain runways long enough to serve most of
the commercial aircraft types. Hence, the second strategy of inter-modalism is to divert
hub-bound flights affected by capacity shortfall at the hub airport to regional airports
(called alternative hubs). The strategy is termed real-time inter-modal diversion (RTIMD).
In contrast to diversions currently implemented in airline operation, this strategy moves
passengers between the airports as necessary to access diverted flights or make inter-
airport connections. Toward this end, dedicated ground transportation services will be
available to transport passengers between a primary hub and alternative hub. Like
RTIMS, RTIMD also allows short-haul flights to be substituted by motor coaches. To
implement this strategy, the alternative hub is selected based on evaluation of maximum
runway length, driving distance, and correlation of weather impact and demand profiles.
An extension of the mathematical programming model of RTIMS is proposed and similar
approximation algorithm is used to obtain optimum results for a case study. Considering
the possibility of the alternative hub being overwhelmed by diverted flights, it is
suggested to enhance the current Ground Delay Program (GDP) to determine the
Controlled Time of Arrivals (CTAs) at both the major hub airport and the alternative hub
airports. That proposed enhanced GDP is termed Regional GDP.

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There are fundamental issues that need to be considered while implementing the
strategies, such as motor coach service provision, passenger, security, and airport facility
issues. This study identifies and assesses these issues, suggests solutions based on
preliminary investigation, and highlights needs for further research and policy decision
making.

The inter-modal framework proposed in this thesis will substantially reduce the costs of
recovering from major hub capacity shortfalls by providing alternatives to simple
cancellation in airlines’ schedule perturbation recovery, thus reducing the number of
disrupted passengers and the delay propagated to later flights and other parts of the
network.

_______________________________
Professor Mark M. Hansen
Dissertation Committee Chair

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CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................1
1.1. Airport Capacity Reduction................................................................................4
1.1.1. Adverse Weather and Airport Capacity......................................................4
1.1.2. Outages and Airport Capacity.....................................................................5
1.1.3. Runway Incursions, Collisions and Airport Capacity.................................6
1.1.4. Terrorist Threat and Airport Capacity........................................................7
1.2. Deterioration of Airspace System Performance with Increase of Traffic
Demand in the Near Future.............................................................................................8
1.3. Airline Operations.............................................................................................10
1.4. Background of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM)..................................12
1.5. The Airport as an Inter-Modal Facility.............................................................17
1.6. Current Inter-modal Practice in U.S. Airlines’ Disruption Management.........18
1.7. Regional Airport Systems.................................................................................20
1.8. Research Objective, Approaches, and Contributions.......................................21
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW..........................................................................24
2.1 Airline Disruption Recovery.............................................................................24
2.2 Airport Congestion Management......................................................................29
CHAPTER 3: REAL-TIME INTER-MODAL SUBSTITUTION (RTIMS)...................31
3.1. Research Motivations and Contributions..........................................................31
3.1.1. Research Motivations................................................................................31
3.1.2. Research Contributions.............................................................................35
3.2. Investigating Short-haul Flight Cancellations and Substitutions......................36
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