Better Pricing Strategies for ATM?

Objectives of this paper are: briefly examine solutions applied in other network industries and based on that, set the policy and pricing context for development of market-based mechanisms for strategic air traffic re-distribution to avoid congestion, which is a main goal of SATURN project. Further, focus on current and possible future ATM pricing policy goals, by summarising current practice in Europe and introducing two possible future scenarios developed within the project. The implementation plan is outlined, discussing both the modelling challenges and the parallel consultation and validation processes. We conclude with a short look ahead

Modulation of en-route charges to redistribute traffic in the European airspace

Peak-load pricing (PLP), a two-tariffs charging scheme commonly used in public transport and utilities, is tested on the European Air Traffic Management (ATM) system as a means for reducing capacity-demand imbalances. In particular, a centralised approach to PLP (CPLP) where a Central Planner (CP) sets en-route charges on the network is presented. CPLP consists of two phases: in the first, congested airspace sectors and their peak and off-peak hours are identified; in the second, CP assesses and sets en-route charges in order to reduce overall shift on the network. Such charges should guarantee that Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) are able to recover their operational costs while inducing the Airspace Users (AUs) to route their flights in a way that respects airspace capacity. The interaction between CP and AUs is modelled as a Stackelberg game and formulated by means of bilevel linear programming. Two heuristic approaches, based on Coordinate-wise Descent and Genetic Algorithms are implemented to solve the CPLP model on a data set obtained from historical data for an entire day of traffic on European airspace. Results show that significant improvements in traffic distribution in terms of shift and sector load can be achieved through this simple en-route charges modulation scheme

SATURN D6.5 - Final Report

The objective of the SATURN (Strategic Allocation of Traffic Using Redistribution in the Network) project is to make novel and credible use of market-based demand-management mechanisms to redistribute air traffic in the European airspace. This reduces congestion and saves the airspace users operational costs. The project is motivated by frequent demand and capacity imbalances in the European airspace network, which are forecast to continue in the near future. The present and foreseen ways of dealing with such imbalances mainly concern strategic and tactical capacity-side interventions, such as resectorisation and opening of more sectors to deal with excess demand. These are followed by tactical demand management measures, if needed. As a result, not only do substantial costs arise, but airspace users are also typically left with no choice but to comply with imposed air traffic flow management measures. The project shows how economic signals could be given to airspace users and air navigation service providers (ANSPs) to improve capacity-demand balancing, airspace design and usage, and what the benefits would be of a centralised planner compared with those of decentralised maximisation of self interests (by the ANSPs and/or airspace users)

Reducing ATFM delays through strategic flight planning

This paper presents an integer programming model for strategic redistribution of flights so as to respect nominal sector capacities, in short computation times for large-scale instances. The main contribution lies in the combination of tackling large-scale strategic flight planning using hard capacity constraints, while considering the whole network (i.e., both airports and sectors). Real historic data for network and traffic description are used for our test instance. Strategic and tactical impact assessments show that early flight planning can lead to the reduction of delays and their costs, showing potential for actual implementation

SATURN D1.1 - Data Management (main report)

SATURN is motivated by frequent demand and capacity imbalances in the European airspace network. Its traffic redistribution mechanisms will be tested on European-wide scale instances to compare different models and analyse modelling results versus current practice. As there are multiple challenges in collecting and processing the data SATURN’s mechanisms and models require, we herein identify the main sources of such data that will be used by the models and provide numerous detailed examples to explain key concepts and project-developed bespoke capabilities

SATURN D4.2 - Pure Pricing Mechanisms

Building on the SATURN D4.1 deliverable, this document describes pure pricing mechanisms that have been studied as part of SATURN. The mathematical formulation of the optimisation model of one mechanism (peak-load pricing) and the algorithmic description of another mechanism (rewarding predictability) are explained in details. Mechanisms’ decentralised and stochastic variants are also presented. The proposed mechanisms are tested numerically on large-scale instances, extracted from historical air traffic data in Europe. The behaviour of mechanisms is analysed and compared

SATURN D3.1 - Pricing mechanisms

Motivated by frequent demand and capacity imbalances in the European airspace network, the SATURN project (‘Strategic Allocation of Traffic Using Redistribution in the Network’) is examining realistic ways to use market-based demand-management mechanisms to redistribute air traffic. Building upon previous deliverables this document presents the set of strategic pricing mechanisms for demand-capacity balancing. Four research avenues were pursued, branching into five centralised and two decentralised pricing mechanisms presented. A comprehensive assessment framework is introduced which will facilitate the demonstration of the validity of designed mechanisms

SATURN D2.1 - Future airspace congestion - a users' discussion guide

The objective of SATURN is to propose and test realistic ways to use market-based, demand-management mechanisms to redistribute air traffic in the European airspace. This document presents a review of the literature on mechanisms, current policy goals, instruments available for their application, and possible future policy goals, from the point of view of their impact on the project. It also includes a review of passenger fare elasticities. We introduce a number of pricing scenarios and candidate mechanisms for capacity redistribution. These will be reviewed by stakeholders at a dedicated workshop. The workshop design and processes are described

An Efficient Two-Fold Marginalized Bayesian Filter for Multipath Estimation in Satellite Navigation Receivers

Multipath is today still one of the most critical problems in satellite navigation, in particular in urban environments, where the received navigation signals can be affected by blockage, shadowing, and multipath reception. Latest multipath mitigation algorithms are based on the concept of sequential Bayesian estimation and improve the receiver performance by exploiting the temporal constraints of the channel dynamics. In this paper, we specifically address the problem of estimating and adjusting the number of multipath replicas that is considered by the receiver algorithm. An efficient implementation via a two-fold marginalized Bayesian filter is presented, in which a particle filter, grid-based filters, and Kalman filters are suitably combined in order to mitigate the multipath channel by efficiently estimating its time-variant parameters in a track-before-detect fashion. Results based on an experimentally derived set of channel data corresponding to a typical urban propagation environment are used to confirm the benefit of our novel approach.</p