The value of flexible flight-to-route assignments in pre-tactical air traffic management

In European air traffic management, there are discussions regarding the future role of the network manager (NM): in particular, should the NM be able to assign flights to specific trajectories, should airspace users be allowed to freely choose their preferred trajectory, or something in between? In this paper, we develop a modeling framework that can be adapted to these settings to assess their effect on key performance indicators.