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We offer a conceptual and empirical framework to predict future aviation timetables. Future timetables are critical for simulating the national airspace system. In the past, timetables have been derived by iteratively scaling up an observed origin and destination trip distribution matrix to match forecasts of airport terminal operations into individual flights. This allocation mechanism has a few shortcomings. Furthermore, it does not use rich data that are presently available. Using an econometrically estimated demand driven passenger flow model, combined with forecasted values of economic and demographic variables for local metro areas, we derive forecasts for origin and destination passenger flows. Passenger itineraries are then assigned using the existing allocations as a guide for predicting the future network. Aircraft type and the number of operations between airports have been derived by using a multinomial aircraft choice model that ties enplanements to aircraft choices. Once flight counts have been forecast, we calibrate the model to align with the baseline OAG. Following this calibration, we use the forecasted values of O&D flows to derive the future aviation timetables
Bhadra et al. (Tue,) studied this question.