Tactical Minimization of the Environmental Impact of Holding in the Terminal Airspace and an Associated Economic Model

Aditya A. Paranjape, Anwesha Basu

Abstract: Minimization of the carbon footprint of aviation is an active area of interest to the industry and policy makers alike. Optimization of the individual flight phases is an important step in that direction. This paper considers the holding phase, wherein aircraft hold in the terminal airspace of airports prior to approach and landing during times of busy operation or when the arrival capacity is reduced due to factors such as bad weather. We propose a tactical method to allocate landing slots while minimizing the environmental impact of holds. An environmentally-driven policy can be perceived as unfair, particularly by airlines whose environmentally friendly aircraft which might need to hold longer than they would under a fair first-come-first-served policy. To alleviate this challenge, we propose a number of economic reward schemes, including one based on a linear programming problem obtained by applying complementary slackness to the dual of the assignment problem.