Strategic Flight Cancellation Under Ground Delay Program Uncertainty

What is it about?

This paper proposes a method for decision making under uncertain constraint futures. The key to decision making under uncertainty is to understand when some decisions should be taken, even though they may turn out to not be warranted verses when to wait until greater clarity as the future is available. The method proposed in this paper identifies multiple decision points, based on the similarity and variability of an underlying forecast of future constraints, and uses these to identify the recommended actions to take now, conditioned on the ability to take futures actions. As such, the recommended actions correspond to those that are most valuable, despite future uncertainty. While applicable to a broad set of domains, the paper uses an example of airline flight cancellation decisions under potential departure disruptions or delays. Using a historical case day, the results demonstrate how decisions can be adapted as new information is made available and that through this method lower costs are incurred earlier, when uncertainty is higher.

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