Book excerpt: Disruptions to commercial airline schedules are frequent and can inflict significant costs. This is the first book to treat the optimisation of disruption management (irregular operations) in air traffic from a common good perspective that addresses the concerns of airlines, airports, air traffic service providers and, most importantly of all, the travelling public. It describes a number of disruption management systems which are already in place at air traffic service (ATC) providers such as Airservices Australia. As such, the book will be of immense value to ATC providers, and will serve as a reference point for planners at airline operations centres who control movements within a 48-hour window. The optimisation techniques described here will also be very useful to academics and postgraduate students in civil aviation and operations research.