Impact of Commercial Airline Network Evolution on the U.S. Air Transportation System

The air traffic forecast method for future schedules used by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) assumes a static route network operated by airlines; that is, new routes will not be added nor existing ones removed. However, the competitive nature of the airline industry is such that routes are routinely added or dropped between cities depending on passenger demand and airline business choices. This represents a significant gap between the forecasted and likely actual state of the US National Airspace System (NAS) in the long term, thus hampering stakeholders and decision-makers in their consideration of major policy, technology and infrastructure changes. To address this gap, a series of algorithms which forecast restructuring of the US commercial airline network were developed and tested. One restructuring algorithm produces discernible differences in the NAS of 2020 as compared to the FAA’s primary forecast. The impact of these network structure differences on NAS-wide delay are assessed via the National Airspace Performance Analysis Capability (NASPAC) simulation. Both average flight delay and total delay is reduced in the modified schedule versus the FAA’s original. Keywords-forecasts; network; air traffic; simulation.