Traffic Flow Management Modeling with the Time Assignment Model

Traffic growth and changes in traffic patterns have caused increasing congestion and delay in the National Airspace System (NAS). A national traffic flow management (TFM) strategy that reduces both congestion and delay could potentially yield the dual benefit of increasing safety and decreasing cost. An operations research (OR) optimization model called the Time Assignment Model has been formulated to generate such strategies. This article presents this model, the TFM problems that it was used to solve, computational results, performance of alternative solutions, and plans for future research. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.