  To mitigate ATFM delay, different approaches have been proposed so far which
can be categorized into strategic and tactical domains. The strategical
techniques mainly concern airport slot allocation and for the tactical domain,
the ATFM function has several solutions available that range from the ground
and air holding to rerouting actions, which have not gained significant
efficiency in ATFM delay mitigation due to the fact that delays become apparent
only on the tactical level when the strategic flight plan has been filled
already. To tackle and address this problem there is a need for an algorithm
that can synchronize strategical and tactical schedules. To fill this gap, in
this paper the concept of fair buffer scheduling is proposed which can
potentially contribute to strategical and tactical operations synchronization
that would result in ATFM delay mitigation by increasing the system's
robustness. The objective is to obtain an optimum fair and efficient buffer
choice that mitigates ATFM delay and increases the stakeholders' welfare. Each
appropriate and efficient approach requires a comprehensive understanding of
the strategical buffer scheduling. This study presents a delay cost and flight
buffer model that could be used for generating optimal buffer times to be
considered as the initial population for the optimization problem to
investigate the viability of employing fairness measures to obtain schedules
with different trade-offs between cost, delay, and fairness.
