Flight allocation in flight-centric air traffic control: Hierarchical clustering and Simulated Annealing approach

This study explores flight allocation within a flight-centric air traffic management framework using hierarchical clustering and Simulated Annealing. The proposed approach involves merging interacting flights before balancing the controllers’ workload with Simulated Annealing. An analysis of the impact of the grouping threshold is conducted to identify the value that best balances minimizing interactions between flights assigned to different controllers and the controllers’ workload. Finally, a comparison with a MILP model demonstrates that the new approach is more computationally efficient and more realistic from an operational perspective.