Handling CFMU slots in busy airports

In busy airports, too many departing flights take off out of the time slot required by the Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU). During ground traffic peaks, taxi out times and runway queuing delays increase, and it seems very hard and maybe unfeasible for ground controllers to organise properly the traffic so that aircraft take off at their scheduled time. In a first part, this paper shows how a ground traffic simulator that includes a conflict resolution module can give accurate predictions of takeoff times. Then, different strategies taking into account these predictions so as to incorporate CFMU slot constraints are compared. The deviation between the required slots and the final takeoff times is measured. The efficiency of the different strategies is compared by the correlation between the number of aircraft and the generated delay.