Simulation Analysis on Flight Delay Propagation Under Different Network Configurations

Abstract

This paper investigates flight delay propagation in air transportation networks (ATNs) by considering both network structures and airport operation performance. An airport susceptible-infected-recovered (ASIR) model is established based on the mechanism of epidemic spreading, where the focus is on the impact of the infection rate in order to properly map and understand the probability of delay propagation. Different network configurations are abstracted under complex network theory, in which the ASIR model can be simulated upon. The simulation results show that the original airport traffic, airport connection and the level of airport turnaround services play important roles in influencing delay propagation in different airports. In addition, changes of network structure such as the emerging of secondary hubs can also influence the delay propagation. INDEX TERMS flight delay propagation, infection rate, network structures, ASIR model, flight delay simulation. HAOYU ZHANG is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Science: Geography at the Geography Department at Ghent University (UGent, Belgium). Her research focuses on Transportation Planning and Management, Transportation network optimization, Complex network theory and Flight delay propagation and controlling. She participates in the Natural Science Foundation of China Project (71201081) and has published 8 publications on these topics, 3 of them are on SCI indexed and 3 are EI indexed.

Low Cost Carriers Induce Specific and Identifiable Delay Propagation Patterns: An Analysis of the EU and US Systems

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Prediction of air traffic delays: An agent-based model introducing refined parameter estimation methods

“…Focusing on the propagation of flight delays, Pyrgiotis et al designed another queuing network model [20]. Moreover, epidemic models and machine learning technologies have been applied to address the problem of the delay propagation of flights and airports [21][22][23][24]. Specially, Li et al presented an epidemic model for reproducing the delay propagation in airport networks with the consideration of the complex interactions between airports [23].…”