Queuing Model for Taxi-Out Time Estimation

Flights incur a large percentage of their delays on the ground during the departure process between their scheduled departure from the gate and takeoff. Because of the large uncertainties associated with them, these delays are difficult to predict and account for, hindering the ability to effectively manage the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. This paper presents an effort to improve the accuracy of estimating the taxi-out time, which is the duration between pushback and takeoff. The method was to identify the main factors that affect the taxi-out time and build an estimation model that takes the most important ones into account. An analysis conducted at Boston Logan International Airport identified the runway configuration, the airline/terminal, the downstream restrictions and the takeoff queue size as the main causal factors that affect the taxi-out time. Of these factors the takeoff queue size was the most important one, where the queue size that an aircraft experienced was measured as the number of t...