GROUND DELAY PROGRAMS: COLLABORATIVE PLANNING UNDER UNCERTAINTY

Ground delay programs (GDPs) are implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to mitigate arrival demand- capacity imbalance at an airport. Typically such conditions occur due to the impact of adverse weather on airport capacity. During a GDP flights are assigned arrival slots which may be later than their scheduled time of arrival. Under the Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) paradigm, which has been adopted since mid 90's, airlines are allowed to perform substitutions among the slots they have been assigned in order to reduce their internal costs and achieve their business objectives. Airlines may also cancel some of their flights and utilize the vacant slots by substituting some of their own flights. However, in certain circumstances, an airline may not be able to substitute one of its flights to such a slot, maybe because the time stamp associated with the slot is too early for substituting any flight. Therefore, after a round of intra-airline substitutions, it is possible that some arrival slots remain unutilized. The FAA then runs the Compression Algorithm to re-allocate arrival slots among flights that are not cancelled by airlines. The basic principle behind this algorithm is that whenever possible a delayed flight is assigned an earlier arriva