A Multi-Objective Approach to Deal with International Airspace Closure/Opening in Spain in an Early-Stage Pandemic Situation

The air traffic system has been identified as one of the main channels of the global spread of COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic, and entry control is crucial for mitigating its transmission and reducing the impact on the population. International airspace closure/opening plays a key role during the early stages of the spread of a pandemic. This is a multi-objective optimization problem where, aside from epidemiological concerns, different conflicting economic and social impacts must be taken into account, such as economic losses for airlines, airports and the regions in which they are located or restrictions on the mobility of the population and connectivity issues. We propose the NSGA-III metaheuristic to solve this airspace closure/opening problem and achieve a good approximation of the Pareto frontier. We then add expert preferences to the problem to derive a compromise solution. The proposed approach is illustrated using the example of Spain with 38 national airports and 569 international connections involving 1196 flights.