Synchronization of Traffic Flow and Sector Opening for Collaborative Demand and Capacity Balancing

This paper proposes a method to synchronize traffic flow optimization and sector opening scheduling, with the aim of achieving flexible demand and capacity balancing (DCB). Delay assignment, trajectory options and sector collapsing are used to manage the traffic demand, while sector opening schemes are to affect the airspace capacity. Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model is built to incorporate these initiatives. Three model variants are presented to illustrate the synchronization process, and their results in a real-world case study demonstrate some promising improvements for the DCB performances.