A Queuing Model of the Airport Departure Process

This paper presents an analytical model of the aircraft departure process at an airport. The modeling procedure includes the estimation of unimpeded taxi-out time distributions, and the development of a queuing model of the departure runway system based on the transient analysis of D(t)/Ek(t)/1 queuing systems. The parameters of the runway service process are estimated using operational data. Using the aircraft pushback schedule as input, the model predicts the expected runway schedule and takeoff times. It also estimates the expected taxi-out time, queuing delay and its variance for each flight, in addition to the congestion level of the airport, sizes of the departure runway queues and the departure throughput. The proposed approach is illustrated using a case study based on Newark Liberty International (EWR) Airport. The model is trained using data from 2011, and is subsequently used to predict taxi-out times in 2007 and 2010. The predictions are compared with actual data to demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the model.