A Semi-quantitative Method for Congestion Alleviation at Air Route Intersections Based on System Dynamics.

With the development of air traffic, congestion at air route intersections has become an increasingly serious problem. To analyze the reasons for the congestion and find a systematic approach to alleviate it. This paper proposes a semi-quantitative method to analyze the congestion-related indicators using system dynamics (SD). To begin with, we construct the indicator system from four aspects: person, equipment, environment, and management. Then, the indicator weights are calculated by AHP and the entropy method, respectively, and weighted to obtain the comprehensive weights. After that, a congestion management model is established by using SD. Finally, we propose a feasible congestion alleviation solution by adjusting the value of some indicators. The results show that indicators of person and environment have a greater impact on congestion. We can adjust the comprehensive quality of controllers, the impact on passengers, the control operational environment, and the flight operational environment to achieve efficient congestion alleviation. This paper provides new insight to analyze the root causes of air route congestion problems from the system dynamics.