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Description:
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The welfare of today's air travelers is being compromised with the establishment of airline "fortresses" at many of our nation's major hub airports . The limited capacity of these sites has increased congestion both in the air and on the ground , causing system -wide passenger delays . Proposals to remedy the situation have included computer -based modernization of air traffic control , the building of more airports (and /or the enlargement of existing ones ) , price controls on slots (i .e . , bidding ) , and government re -regulation . These proposals have focused primarily on the airport as the source of the capacity problem ; however , relatively little has been accomplished in the way of a system -wide approach . If direct nonstop service could be offered between every city -pair , then passenger utility would be maximized ; and if all destinations could be connected with the shortest possible span , air service utility would be maximized . Obviously neither of these extremes can exist , for the maximum benefit of one represents the greatest cost in utiHty to the other .
Possibilities exist between these extremes , however , that offer "optimized" air passenger service in some sense . In this investigation the computer implementation of a mathematical model was developed to logically explore these possibilities in a spatial way to help planners optimize air passenger service -as it relates to airport capacity enhancement planning . The model was demonstrated on an actual region where measurements of service utility and passenger convenience were determined and compared with other common network types . Results indicated that in terms of network distance , route directness , and number of intermediate stops , branching networks compared favorably with hub -andspoke networks , but with a significant decrease in major hub congestion . |