An optimization approach for airport slot allocation under IATA guidelines

Air traffic demand has grown to exceed available capacity during extended parts of each day at many of the busiest airports worldwide. Absent opportunities for capacity expansion, this may require the use of demand management measures to restore the balance between scheduled traffic and available capacity. The main demand management mechanism in use today is the administrative schedule coordination process operated by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is in place at the great majority of busy airports outside the United States. This paper proposes a novel multi-objective Priority-based Slot Allocation Model (PSAM) that optimizes slot allocation, while complying with the complex set of priorities and requirements specified by the IATA guidelines, as well as with the declared capacity constraints at the airports. It presents an efficient computational approach that provides optimal slot allocation solutions at airports significantly larger than has been possible to date. The model is applied to two Portuguese airports, a small one (Madeira) and a mid-size one (Porto) using highly detailed data on airline slot requests and airport capacity constraints. Results suggest that PSAM can improve the efficiency of current practice by providing slot allocations that match better the slot requests of airlines. Equally important, PSAM can also quantify the sensitivity of slot allocation decisions to the various priorities and requirements specified in the IATA guidelines.