University of Texas Professor Constantine Caramanis and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the system will monitor weather conditions as well as current aircraft locations and probable routes.

"There is currently no unified decision-making framework for air traffic flow optimization," said Caramanis. "The complicated nature of the process, and the need to make quick adjustments when changes occur, will best be addressed with a mathematical model that combines theories and calculations from probability, statistics, optimization modeling, economics and game theory."

The researchers, led by MIT Professor Cynthia Barnhart, are also considering ways to reduce flight delays and cancellations, including allowing airlines to barter for slots when one airline can't get a flight off the ground and others could do so.

"The idea is to have an overarching optimization model that allows balance and flexibility to the decisions being made so that we can successfully exploit whatever slack in the system we can," Caramanis said. "Our model will have autonomous re-configurability which is the ability to adapt to new information on its own."