An Efficient Algorithm for Solving an Air Traffic Management Model of the National Airspace System

Introduction: The NAS is the infrastructure that supports the 60000 daily flights over the United States. The hub and spoke operations of various airlines has changed traffic patterns and contributed significantly to congestion and delay in the NAS. Growth of air traffic, matching or exceeding growth in capacity and occasional bad weather, has added to this congestion and delay. Air traffic delay has been a subject of research for many years. In this paper, a large integer-programming model for minimizing air traffic delay has been presented. Solving problem instances arising from this model involves use of preprocessing, constraint strengthening, and a carefully designed computer implementation.