Journal of Civil Aviation University of China ›› 2025, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (6): 31-37.

• Air Transportation Management • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Air traffic flow forecast in the control area based on the four-stage method

  

  1. 1. College of Air Traffic Management, CAUC, Tianjin 300300, China; 2. Shaanxi Zhongyu Aviation Technology
    Co., Ltd., Xi′an 710000, China
  • Received:2024-03-12 Revised:2024-04-30 Online:2025-12-20 Published:2026-01-10

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Abstract:

In order to solve the problem of the mismatch of traffic flow distribution across airways and the unfair allocation
of airspace resources resulting from independent air traffic flow forecasts conducted by individual air traffic control bureaus, this study proposes a forecasting method based on the four-stage prediction theory for estimating
both overall air traffic flow in the control area and the traffic flow distribution across its internal airways. The
grey prediction model was employed to forecast the number of flights from source airports within the control area.
A double-constrained gravity model was established to estimate the distributed air traffic flow between origin destination (OD) pairs associated with these airports. The multinomial Logit model was then applied to predict
the traffic flow distribution across airways between the OD pairs, and the forecasted air traffic flow for the control
area was obtained by aggregating these distributed flows. The method was validated using the Xi′ an Regional
Control Area as a case study. The results show that this method can effectively realize the air traffic flow forecast
within the control area while ensuring consistency in the traffic flow distribution across airways. It can serve as a
reference for the unified forecast of both traffic flow distribution across airways and control area air traffic flow at
the national level.

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