Conference Agenda

Airport surface congestion is expected to intensify over the coming decades due to sustained growth in air traffic demand and the limited expansion of airport infrastructure. This paper proposes a hybrid taxi queueing model to estimate the portion of taxi-out delay attributable to traffic-induced conges-tion at saturated airports. The model is subsequently used to evaluate the im-pact of non-stop taxiing implementation on taxi-out times under congested operating conditions. The objective is to assign a normalized value, ex-pressed in terms of perceived effectiveness for airline operators, associated with the implementation of local 4D taxi trajectory optimization solutions. Results obtained from two airport pilot cases indicate that local optimization strategies can provide significant benefits at congested but not fully saturated airports. In highly critical conditions, however, such solutions should be complemented by measures aimed at reducing overall system variability. These findings highlight the importance of integrating taxi routing optimiza-tion with complementary surface traffic management strategies to fully un-lock system-level operational benefits.