On Smith Business Close-Up: Easing Airport Congestion

Broadcast Dates: Jan. 8, 7:30 p.m. | Jan. 11, 7:30 a.m. | Jan. 12, 4:30 a.m.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation were poised to auction landing and take-off time slots at New York’s major airports on January 12 before a last-minute court-ordered stay halted the action. Airport slots have never been auctioned, anywhere in the world, and a group of professors from the University of Maryland was instrumental in designing the process. The auction plan will now become a proposal under the Obama administration, where it may die. 

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. Michael Ball discusses the viability of slot auctions and how they came about as a solution to easing congestion at LaGuardia, Newark and Kennedy airports.  

Ball is the Orkand Corp. Professor of Management Science and co-director of NEXTOR, the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research. He’s been leading the project to study ways to reduce congestion at the New York area airports for the past four years and pulled in Smith School colleague S. Raghu Raghavan, associate professor of management science, to design the auction, along with two University of Maryland economists who worked on the process and will manage the auction. The slot auctions have proved a contentious solution, but one the FAA hopes will ease delay problems and serve as a successful model for other airports.