I thought infinity was a big number
If we allocated 25 slots per hour on most mornings we would unnecessarily delay between 3 and 6 flights.
When aeroplanes are servicable, self loading freight has turned up on time, aircraft taxy on time and in a good order, we can punch out 32 per hour. We do reduce the slots available when we are reduced to single runway ops or when weather precludes the use of tower visual separation for departures.
I am enough of a mathematician to be fairly confident that say by having 2 too many slots allocated per hour that in the 2 hour long departure rush, the overflow in the queue will not even come close to infinity... more like 4
The same technique is used in Sydney for the management of CTMS based arrival slots eg in a particular runway configuration and cloud base the achievable acceptance rate is "X" but X plus 2 slots are made available, once again to ensure a slot does not go unfilled.
Anyone have a better management strategy I'd be glad to hear it