Modeling ATC Clearance Delivery Operation as a Queueing System with Deterministic and Stochastic Service Times

The provision of aerodrome air traffic control services at a regional airport is typically managed by a single air traffic controller working alone in single-person operation mode. To prevent delays in service provision and enhance the capacity of the control tower, it may be necessary to open another working position, such as ATC clearance delivery. In this paper, we present a queueing model for simulating processes for the control tower at the Ostrava/Mošnov airport. The activities are categorized into two groups: the first group involves control activities affecting the safety of aerodrome traffic with high priority, while the second group pertains to the provision of ATC clearance delivery information with lower priority. In general, the communication must always include certain pieces of information that need to be transmitted every single time. Using this assumption, we have divided the period of correspondence into deterministic and stochastic parts. The analyzed data were incorporated into a colored Petri nets model, and experiments were conducted to establish a traffic threshold at which the ATC clearance delivery working position should be activated to increase the capacity of the control tower.