摘要: |
Airport configuration selection is a complex decision-making process that involves several
operational and human factors. In this paper we propose a novel recursive multi-step machine
learning (ML) approach to predict airport configuration. The multi-step approach guaran-
tees stability of the predicted configuration by taking as input the configuration predicted
at the previous time step. The features of the proposed model include weather data, future
arrival and departure counts and current configuration. Due to the importance of arrival
and departure counts in predicting the airport configuration, arrival counts are calculated
using landing time predictions selected from physics-based landing time predictions available
in FAA System Wide Information Management data feeds for each flight. The selection rules
were developed and refined to select the most accurate time for different phases of flight. The
proposed model predicts the airport configurations up to 6 hours ahead. In this paper we show
the predictive performance of the proposed model for six major US airports, including Char-
lotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW),
John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR),
LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Dallas Love Field Airport (DAL). We trained and evaluated
models on 2019 and 2020 data in order to study the effect of the pandemic and how changes in
traffic patterns affected the performance of the proposed model. Results are compared with
a baseline assuming no airport configuration changes. In our results for DFW, we obtained a
prediction accuracy of 89.3% for 3 hours ahead prediction, and 82.8% for 6 hours ahead when
applied on 2019 data. |