Principal Investigator Cynthia Barnhart
Parameter selection for the Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) initiatives is performed by the regulatory authorities such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), after accounting for airline preferences. We design voting schemes that can replace the existing ad-hoc methods. Strategic behavior by each airline is modeled using an integer programming (IP) formulation which explicitly accounts for the tie-breaking rules. We solve for a Nash equilibrium outcome using best response heuristics. Using actual data on airline operations in the United States, we evaluate the equilibrium properties of these games, including existence, uniqueness, convergence, system optimality and pareto optimality and recommend mechanisms with most desirable properties.