A new concept for pricing of flight trajectories was presented in the seminar series "New and Emerging Aviation Technologies".
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the federal aviation authority of the United States and serves as an administrative part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, based in Washington, D.C.
Prof. Strauss and his former doctoral student Dr. Künnen presented their research findings on innovative pricing of flight routes to the FAA on April 23, 2024, as part of the seminar series "New and Emerging Aviation Technologies." The audience included Chief Scientific Advisors and Chief Technical Advisors of the FAA.
Airlines must inform air traffic control of their desired route before departure. The actual route flown results in fees to cover the costs of air traffic control services in the countries the aircraft has flown through. These fees, which are currently quite static in Europe, vary significantly even between neighboring countries, leading airlines to often fly detours to save on these fees.
The new approach eliminates these misincentives and instead rewards airlines with lower fees for greater flexibility regarding their flight routes. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the potential of this approach and were received with great interest. The technical details of this work were published here in the renowned journal Transportation Research Part B: Methodological.