The following thesis describes and analyzes the development of the U.S. slot allocation system from 1968 until today, in order to draw relevant conclusions for a new European Slot Regulation. The European Commission is currently drafting a new Slot Regulation purporting to introduce market mechanisms. A similar approach was espoused in the United States from 1986 onward, but was ultimately supplanted by overriding legislation in 2000. The analysis of the U.S. slot allocation system reveals the reasons underlying its abolition and queries whether this experience can be successfully transposed in Europe. The thesis commences by providing general information on the definition of slots, slot allocation, and airport capacity. A brief review of the European Commission's current consultation process on the implementation of market mechanisms for slot allocation follows. The main part of the thesis discusses the U.S. High Density Rule and the Rules for the Allocation and Transfer of High Density Airport Slots in historical order. Some criticisms frequently voiced assert that the Rules artificially limited access to airports, constituted barriers to market entry, restricted airline competition, generated higher fares, and yielded adverse effects on smaller communities which, in turn, lost access to key markets. Through a favorable assessment of the Rules, the thesis analyses these concerns and concludes that the suppression of the Rules was rather prompted by local political motivations than by other rationalities. However, experiences drawn from the U.S. Rules demonstrate that a future European secondary market for slots, if implemented under a grand fathering system, will likely have a positive impact on the efficiency of airport capacity, but not on access to the market and competition.

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This dissertation aims at improving the efficiency, robustness, and flexibility of airport operations through intelligent gate assignment. Traditional research on gate assignment focuses on the accommodation of passengers' demands such as walking time of passengers, and the robustness of gate assignment. In spite of its importance on the ramp operations, there is a lack of research to account ramp congestion when gates are assigned. Therefore, this dissertation proposes a new perspective on the gate assignment that accounts for ramp congestion. For that purpose, a ramp operations model based on observations at Atlanta airport is presented to understand the characteristics of aircraft movement on the ramp. The proposed gate assignment problem minimizes passenger-time spent on ramp areas. In addition, this dissertation is conducted to satisfy the needs of passengers, aircraft, and operations from the perspectives of passengers. Using actual passenger data at a major hub airport, the proposed gate assignment is assessed by means of passengers' transit time, passengers' time spent on the ramp, and passengers' waiting time for a gate. Results show that the proposed gate assignment outperforms the current gate assignment in every metric. This dissertation also analyzes the impact of gate assignment on departure metering, which controls the number of pushbacks in order to reduce airport congestion. Then, some of departing flights are held at gates, so it increases the chance of gate conflict, which reduces the efficiency of departure metering as well as ramp operations. In order to analyze the impact of gate assignment on departure metering, this dissertation simulates departure processes at two airports. Results show that the proposed robust gate assignment reduces the occurrence of gate conflicts under departure metering and helps to utilize gate-holding times to some extent.

The final thesis analyzes the actual situation of air transport in North America and the EU. New Open skies treaty signed by EU and USA (also EU and Canada) is the objective of the final thesis. An other goal is its influence on transatlantic flights. Moreover the final thesis treats of the allocation of the airport's slots and the actual safety situation as well. Finally there is a small part about alternative jet fuels and the perspectives of air freight transport.