Determining the Number of Airport Arrival Slots

At many congested airports, access rights are governed by a system of slot controls. A slot conveys to its owner the right to schedule an operation (flight arrival or departure). In this paper, stochastic optimization models are developed to determine the numbers of slots to make available over the course of a day, controlling for the long-term uncertainty induced in arrival or departure capacities because of weather conditions. Three related integer programming formulations for this problem are presented, which vary both in their computational properties and the economic trade-offs modeled. The models are compared both analytically and computationally. Experiments using data from New York's LaGaurdia Airport are reported to demonstrate the impact of these models on optimizing slot profiles while considering long-term capacity uncertainty and several policy objectives.