The design of a market mechanism to allocate Air Traffic Flow Management slots

In Europe, when an imbalance between demand and capacity is detected for air traffic network resources, Air Traffic Flow Management slots are allocated to flights on the basis of a First Planned First Served principle. In the case of a single constrained en-route sector or airport, we propose a mechanism for slot allocation which is based on market principles as it enables airlines to pay for delay reduction or receive compensation for delay increase. The mechanism fulfills the properties of individual rationality, budget balance, coalitional rationality and Pareto efficiency, and it can be implemented through two alternative distributed approaches that do not require airlines to disclose confidential information. Both approaches have the additional advantage that they directly involve airlines in the decision making process. Two computational examples relying on real data indicate that the market-based solution allows the participating airlines to significantly decrease their overall delay-related costs with respect to the First Planned First Served allocation.