A model for predicting flight delay and delay propagation based on parallel cellular automata

The extended cellular automata (ECA) is one of the extending application of cellular automata (CA) by extending the component of cell and the definition of cellular neighbors. Based on ECA, the definition of parallel cellular automata (PCA) composed of multi-ECA is proposed and the evolutions of all ECAs are parallel. Depending on the model of PCA, it becomes more easily to describe the synchronous evolution and the state propagation of a complicated system, which is composed of multi-subsystem. Flight delay and delay propagation among multi-aerodrome is one of the problems encountered by most airlines. The simulation based on the model of PCA shows that the model of PCA is a new approach to describe the prediction of flight delay and delay propagation.