The truncation algorithm in the reassignment of landing slots

Abstract

When an airport's preexisting landing schedule becomes inefficient mainly due to inclement weather, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States aims to create a new queue that does not waste airport landing slots, considering airlines' incentives. Although the incentive to report delays is satisfied by the compression algorithm currently used by the FAA, it fails to give airlines the incentive to report cancellations. This paper gives an alternative mechanism, called the truncation algorithm, that satisfies the two incentive conditions above. Further, we show that the truncation algorithm satisfies desirable properties such as nonwastefulness and individual rationality.