American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 1 Analysis of Increasing User Flow Management Responsibility using Shared Delay Information Jeff Henderson * and Husni Idris † Engility Corporation, Billerica, MA, 01821 Rafal Kicinger ‡ and Jimmy Krozel § Metron Aviation, Inc., Dulles, VA, 20166 In the National Airspace System traffic demand exceeds capacity of airspace resources during a number of conditions such as inclement weather. Currently, the traffic flow management function of maintaining demand below capacity is centralized within the air traffic service provider and users have limited opportunities to make flight changes through requests. To alleviate this limitation, this paper investigates shifting some of the traffic flow management responsibility to users when flights are sufficiently upstream of the congestion. A boundary at a threshold distance from congested sectors is introduced, outside of which users directly implement their preferences by assigning delay and switching their flights to alternate routes. The users make decisions using service provider generated delay feedback and flow plan that specifies alternative routes. Inside the boundary the service provider makes flight decisions without considering user preferences. This new allocation of responsibilities may not be feasible since allowing users to actively participate in traffic flow management with only delay feedback may not eliminate the congestion. Simulation experiments are conducted that vary the location of the boundary where responsibility is switched and the percentage of flights that are assigned delay by users, to analyze under which conditions the excess demand can be eliminated. Results indicate that delay feedback from the service provider is not sufficient to make independent user actions help in eliminating the congestion, and additional mechanisms are needed. Users benefited more when they disregarded the service provider delay feedback and did not assign delays to their flights. Nomenclature α 1 ,α 2 ,α 3 ,α 4 = User route cost function coefficients B i = Indicator variable that equals 1 if flight i is projected to enter the congested sectors while crossing the responsibility boundary c j,k,t = Capacity of resource j during the time period t that route k is projected to demand resource j CF k = Cost function for route k ground d = Mean ground delay obtained from the delay map j d = Mean delay absorbed in sector j obtained from the delay map D a = Total ground and airborne delay required for sectors along the assigned route D k = Total ground and airborne delay required for sectors along alternative route k E i = Indicator variable that equals 1 if flight i enters a congested sector and contributes to demand exceeding capacity ETA a = Unimpeded estimated time of arrival to the destination for the assigned route ETA k = Unimpeded estimated time of arrival to the destination for alternative route k h = Index of the last high priority flight in user priority ranked list of flights * Senior Research Engineer, 300 Concord Road, Suite 400, AIAA Member † Principal Research Engineer, 300 Concord Road, Suite 400, AIAA Member ‡ Senior Analyst, 45300 Catalina Court, Suite 101, AIAA Member § Senior Engineer, 45300 Catalina Court, Suite 101, AIAA Associate Fellow 9th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO) <br>and<br>Air 21 - 23 September 2009, Hilton Head, South Carolina AIAA 2009-7126 Copyright © 2009 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. The U.S. Government has a royalty-free license to exercise all rights under the copyright claimed herein for Governmental purposes. All other rights are reserved by the copyright owner.