The Static Stochastic Ground Holding Problem with Aggregate Demands

The ground delay program is a mechanism used to decrease the rate of incoming ights into an airport when it is projected that arrival demand into the airport will exceed capacity. In this paper, we present an integer programming model for planning ground delay programs. The model considers a stochastic capacity pro le which is represented by a set of airport capacity scenarios and their probabilities. Both the demand on the airport and the output of the model are represented at an aggregate level in terms of numbers of ights per unit time. This allows the model to be used in conjunction with arbitrarily complex processes for allocating individual ights to slots. It was speci cally designed to be used in the Collaborative Decision Making setting where individual ight assignments result from an iterative process involving both the airlines and tra c ow managers. We show that the linear programming dual of the model can be transformed into a network ow problem. This implies that the integer program can be solved e ciently using linear programming or network ow methods. 2