Analysis of Additional Delays Experienced by Flights Subject to Ground Holding

Abstract

Flights subject to Ground Delay Programs and Airspace Flow Programs are held on the ground, taking specified delays at their departure airports, to address capacity constraints at their arrival airports and regions of en route airspace, respectively. These ground holds, ranging from tens of minutes to a few hours, affect a large number of flights and can disrupt air traffic operations on a national scale. It is therefore of interest to minimize additional delays for such flights. This paper analyzes the magnitude and nature of additional delays experienced by flights subject to ground holding, utilizing historical flight operations data for five airports whose arrivals experienced the most pre-departure ground holding in 2015. At four of these airports, arrivals subject to ground holding incurred additional gate-arrival delays substantially larger (about two to three times on average) than for arrivals that were not subject to ground holding. These inequities in additional gate-arrival delays were caused primarily by taxi-out delays at the departure airports. Airborne delays were a secondary cause of these delay inequities, and there was a minor contribution from taxi-in delays. There were mixed trends in the role of gate-departure delays not caused by ground holding. Overall, these results motivate a recommendation to expedite surface movements at departure airports for those flights already delayed by ground holding.

Maximizing airborne delay at no extra fuel cost by means of linear holding

“…For instance, it can be combined with the airline strategy of wait-for-passengers (only in case delay is recovered), i.e., deciding to actively delay outbound flights at the hub to ensure that connecting passengers do not miss their connections (see Delgado et al (2016)). In addition, through substituting part of the ground holding by a flexible LH, the additional delays (see Bilimoria (2016)) raised from the lack of coordination among multiple traffic management initiatives can be reduced remarkably (Xu and Prats (2017)). Nevertheless, further discussion on the detailed application is out of the scope of this paper.…”

Effects of linear holding for reducing additional flight delays without extra fuel consumption

“…In this case, the objective function is still as presented in Eq. 10, but the initial point of the optimization problem is moved to the phase where this airborne delay occurs (i.e., initial time is defined as t (1) AD ). In addition, the flown trajectory must also be fixed, along with added constraints below:…”

“…In the recent 16th ATIO (AIAA) conference, Bilimoria [1] presented an analysis of the additional delays experienced by flights subject to ground holding for Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) or Airspace Flow Programs (AFPs). Statistic results obtained from five airports of arrivals suffering the most pre-departure ground holding in 2015 were shown, suggesting that the additional delays of those EDCT (Expect Departure Clearance Time) affected flights were substantially larger in four of the five airports (about two to three times on average) than for arrivals that were not subject to ground holding.…”

“…1 illustrates some key flight-related events (blue rectangles) and respective time intervals. In [1], historical flight operations from five airports (LGA, SFO, EWR, JFK, PHL), whose arrivals experienced the most predeparture ground holding in 2015, were examined computing the variance between scheduled times and actual times. According to this study, each of the flight-related events of Fig.…”

Analyzing Double Delays at Newark Liberty International Airport

“…Ref. 9 analyzes the nature and magnitude of additional delays experienced by flights subject to ground holding, finding that at four of the five airports studied, arrivals subject to ground holding incurred higher gate-arrival delays than arrivals not subject to ground holding.…”