Abstract
Continuous growth of air transport demand has caused congestion at many large airports. The most common short- and long-term delay-mitigating measures applied to these airports have been demand management measures for slot control and eventually congestion charging in the short term and building new runways and thus increasing capacity in the long term. The possible effects of one of the relatively innovative short-term measures for mitigating congestion and delays, that is, prioritizing aircraft landings at the congested runways, were investigated. This approach can be categorized as a demand management measure expected to produce deterring effects similar to the effects of congestion-charging measures on the access of smaller aircraft to heavily congested airports. In particular, the necessary operational and institutional conditions, and the potential benefits from the implementation of such a prioritizing rule, were analyzed. In addition, the deterministic queuing model for estimating queues, delays, and related costs of particular prioritized aircraft categories (classes) was developed. In a given context, the assignment of priorities to particular aircraft was based on the dynamic priority function designed to minimize the total cost of delays for all aircraft. The model was applied to the traffic scenario at a congested European airport using what-if reasoning.
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