"Airline congestion is a perennial headache for airlines and millions of travelers around the world," reports The Dartmouth. "Moreover, it cost the U.S. approximately $30 billion in 2007. However, a new study published in the journal Transportation Science by Thayer School of Engineering professor Vikrant Vaze and Carnegie Mellon University professor Alexandre Jacquillat sought to remedy these expensive delays by applying game theory to flight scheduling models at airports.

"This study, titled 'Interairline Equity in Airport Scheduling Interventions,' is the first-ever to address both efficiency and equity considerations in its proposed flight scheduling model, which the researchers named the 'Integrated Capacity Utilization and Scheduling Model with Equity Considerations.' Previous models that focused solely on efficiency inadvertently prioritized the flights of certain airlines more than others, which creates interairline inequity, according to Vaze.

"'We wanted to show how we could include other constraints beyond what has been done so far, in particular that of equity,' Vaze said. '[This is] to explicitly ensure every airline—and as a result every passenger—is treated fairly.'"