Investigating the Volume -Delay Relationship at Congested Airports

[Abstract] Congested airports in the National Airspace System (NAS) are commonly modeled as queueing systems. Some models repres ent airports as simple queues, with one server representing the aggregate runway capacity at that airport, while more sophisticated models explicitly account for the dependencies between different runways and the surrounding terminal airspace. The FAA has been collecting data on airport volume and delays for many years. The question this paper seeks to answer concerns the validity of simple airport queueing abstraction. Do the recorded data support the hypothesis that airports, in the aggregate, can be re presented as queueing systems?