Skip to main content

Airport Airside Optimisation Problems

  • Chapter
Automated Scheduling and Planning

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 505))

Abstract

This chapter aims to give the reader an accessible overview of airside airport operational research problems, with a particular focus upon runway scheduling, which is the subject of the case study. A number of problems are described, highlighting the direction of the research in each area and pointing the reader towards key publications where more information can be gained. Some of the surrounding problems are also outlined, to better understand the airport context. A case study is then provided, describing a system which was developed to aid runway controllers at Heathrow. Importantly, this considers a combination of two separate problems and the way in which these are simultaneously handled by the solution method. Results are provided for the presented case study, showing the potential benefits of decision support in that area. The chapter ends with a discussion of the likely ongoing importance of considering increasingly realistic objectives and constraints, of combining problems, and of targeting the environmental challenge at airports.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Abdelghany, A., Abdelghany, K., Narasimhan, R.: Scheduling baggage-handling facilities in congested airports. Journal of Air Transport Management 12, 76–81 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anagnostakis, I., Clarke, J.P.: Runway operations planning, a two-stage heuristic algorithm. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Aircraft, Technology, Integration and Operations Forum, Los Angeles, CA, report AIAA-2002-5886 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Andersson, K., Carr, F., Feron, E., Hall, W.D.: Analysis and modelling of ground operations at hub airports. In: Proceedings of the 3rd USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar, Napoli, Italy (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ascó, A., Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K.: The airport baggage sorting station allocation problem. In: Proceedings of the 5th Multidisciplinary International Scheduling Conference (MISTA 2011), Phoenix, Arizona, USA (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D.: On-line decision support for take-off runway scheduling at london heathrow airport. PhD thesis, The University of Nottingham (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.S., Reeson, D.: The effect of the planning horizon and freezing time on take-off sequencing. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2006), Belgrade, Serbia, Montenegro (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.S., Reeson, D.: Hybrid meta-heuristics to aid runway scheduling at London Heathrow airport. Transportation Science 41(1), 90–106 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.S., Reeson, D.: On-line decision support for take-off runway scheduling with uncertain taxi times at London Heathrow airport. The Journal of Scheduling 11(5), 323–346 (2008)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.S., Reeson, D.: An examination of take-off scheduling constraints at London Heathrow Airport. Public Transport 1, 169–187 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.: TSAT allocation at London Heathrow: the relationship between slot compliance, throughput and equity. Public Transport 2, 173–198 (2010a)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Ravizza, S.: The airport ground movement problem: Past and current research and future directions. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2010), Budapest, Hungary, pp. 131–138 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Greenwood, J.S., Reeson, D.: Addressing the Pushback Time Allocation Problem at Heathrow airport. Transportation Science (2012) (to appear), http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.1120.0446

  • Balakrishna, P., Ganesan, R., Sherry, L.: Accuracy of reinforcement learning algorithms for predicting aircraft taxi-out times: A case-study of tampa bay departures. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 18(6), 950–962 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Balakrishnan, H., Chandran, B.G.: Algorithms for scheduling runway operations under constrained position shifting. Operations Research 58(6), 1650–1665 (2010)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Barnhart, C., Belobaba, P., Odoni, A.R.: Applications of operations research in the air transport industry. Transportation Science 37(4), 368–391 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bazargan, M., Fleming, K., Subramanian, P.: A simulation study to investigate runway capacity using taam. In: Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, San Diego, California, USA, vol. 2, pp. 1235–1243 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Beasley, J.E., Krishnamoorthy, M., Sharaiha, Y.M., Abramson, D.: Scheduling aircraft landings - the static case. Transportation Science 34, 180–197 (2000)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Beasley, J.E., Sonander, J., Havelock, P.: Scheduling aircraft landings at London Heathrow using a population heuristic. Journal of the Operational Research Society 52, 483–493 (2001)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Beasley, J.E., Krishnamoorthy, M., Sharaiha, Y.M., Abramson, D.: Displacement problem and dynamically scheduling aircraft landings. Journal of the Operational Research Society 55(1), 54–64 (2004)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bellmore, M., Nemhauser, G.L.: The traveling salesman problem: A survey. Operations Research 16, 538–558 (1968)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bennell, J., Mesgarpour, M., Potts, C.: Airport runway scheduling. 4OR: A Quarterly Journal of Operations Research 9, 115–138 (2011)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Bianco, L., Ricciardelli, S., Rinaldi, G., Sassano, A.: Scheduling tasks with sequence-dependent processing times. Naval Research Logistics 35, 177–184 (1988)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bianco, L., Mingozzi, A., Ricciardelli, S.: The travelling salesman problem with cumulative costs. Networks 23, 81–91 (1993)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bianco, L., Dell’Olmo, P., Giordani, S.: Minimizing total completion time subject to release dates and sequence-dependent processing times. Annals of Operations Research 86, 393–415 (1999)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Blum, C., Roli, A.: Metaheuristics in combinatorial optimization: Overview and conceptual comparison. ACM Computing Surveys 35(3), 268–308 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolander, M.A.: Scheduling and control strategies for the departure problem in air traffic control. PhD thesis, University of Cincinnati (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolat, A.: Assigning arriving flights at an airport to the available gates. Journal of the Operational Research Society 50(1), 23–34 (1999)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bolat, A.: Models and a genetic algorithm for static aircraft-gate assignment problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society 52(10), 1107–1120 (2000a)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolat, A.: Procedures for providing robust gate assignments for arriving aircrafts. European Journal of Operational Research 120(1), 63–80 (2000b)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bolender, M.A., Slater, G.L.: Analysis and optimization of departure sequences. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit, Denver, CO, pp. 1672–1683 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  • Burke, E.K., Causmaecker, P.D., Maere, G.D., Mulder, J., Paelinck, M., Berghe, G.V.: A multi-objective approach for robust airline scheduling. Computers & Operations Research 37(5), 822–832 (2010)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Chandran, B., Balakrishnan, H.: A dynamic programming algorithm for robust runway scheduling. In: Proceedings of the American Control Conference, New York, USA, pp. 1161–1166 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J., Ravizza, S., Atkin, J.A.D., Stewart, P.: On the utilisation of fuzzy rule-based systems for taxi time estimations at airports. In: Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2011), Saarbrücken, Germany. OpenAccess Series in Informatics (OASIcs), vol. 20, pp. 134–145 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Clare, G.L., Richards, A.G.: Optimization of taxiway routing and runway scheduling. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 12(4), 1000–1013 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clausen, J., Larsen, A., Larsen, J., Rezanova, N.J.: Disruption management in the airline industry–concepts, models and methods. Computers & Operations Research 37(5), 809–821 (2010)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Dear, R.G., Sherif, Y.S.: The dynamic scheduling of aircraft in high density terminal areas. Microelectronics and Reliability 29(5), 743–749 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dear, R.G., Sherif, Y.S.: An algorithm for computer assisted sequencing and scheduling of terminal area operations. Transportation Research Part A, Policy and Practive 25, 129–139 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deau, R., Gotteland, J.B., Durand, N.: Runways sequences and ground traffic optimisation. In: Proceedings of the 3nd International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2008), Fairfax, VA, USA (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ding, H., Lim, A., Rodrigues, B., Zhu, Y.: The over-constrained airport gate assignment problem. Computers & Operations Research 32(7), 1867–1880 (2005)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Dorndorf, U., Drexl, A., Nikulin, Y., Pesch, E.: Flight gate scheduling: state-of-the-art and recent developments. Omega 35(3), 326–334 (2007a)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dorndorf, U., Jaehn, F., Chen, L., Hui, M., Pesch, E.: Disruption management in flight gate scheduling. Statistica Neerlandica 61(1), 92–114 (2007b)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Dorndorf, U., Jaehn, F., Pesch, E.: Modelling robust flight-gate scheduling as a clique partitioning problem. Transportation Science 42(3), 292–301 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dorndorf, U., Jaehn, F., Pesch, E.: Flight gate scheduling with respect to a reference schedule. Annals of Operations Research 194(1), 177–187 (2012)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Ernst, A.T., Krishnamoorthy, M., Storer, R.H.: Heuristic and exact algorithms for scheduling aircraft landings. Networks 34, 229–241 (1999)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Eurocontrol. Air traffic flow & capacity management operations, ATFCM Users Manual, edition 16.0 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Fahle, T., Feldmann, R., Götz, S., Grothklags, S., Monien, B.: The aircraft sequencing problem. In: Klein, R., Six, H.-W., Wegner, L. (eds.) Computer Science in Perspective. LNCS, vol. 2598, pp. 152–166. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Filar, J.A., Manyem, P., White, K.: How airlines and airports recover from schedule perturbations: a survey. Annals of Operations Research 108, 315–333 (2001)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Gendreau, M., Potvin, J.Y.: Metaheuristics in combinatorial optimization. Annals of Operations Research 140, 189–213 (2005)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbo, E.P.: Arrival/departure tradeoff optimisation: a case study at the st. louis lambert international airport (stl). In: Proceedings of the 5th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar, Budapest, Hungary (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  • Glover, F.: Tabu search - part i. ORSA Journal on Computing 1(3), 190–206 (1989)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Glover, F.: Tabu search - part ii. ORSA Journal on Computing 2(1), 4–32 (1990)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Glover, F., Kochenberger, G. (eds.): Handbook of Metaheuristics. Kluwer Academic Publishers (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Glover, F., Laguna, M.: Tabu Search. Kluwer Academic Publishers (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, D.E.: Genetic Algorithms in Search Optimization and Machine Learning. Addison Wesley (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gotteland, J.B., Durand, N., Alliot, J.M., Page, E.: Aircraft ground traffic optimization. In: Proceedings of the 4th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Research and Development Seminar, Santa Fe, NM, USA (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hillier, F.S., Lieberman, G.J.: Introduction to Operations Research, 9th edn. McGraw-Hill (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman, R., Ball, M.: A comparison of formulations for the single-airport ground-holding problem with banking constraints. Operations Research 48, 578–590 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Idris, H.R., Clarke, J.P., Bhuva, R., Kang, L.: Queuing model for taxi-out time estimation. Air Traffic Control Quarterly 10(1), 1–22 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaehn, F.: Solving the flight gate assignment problem using dynamic programming. Zeitschrift fr Betriebswirtschaft 80, 1027–1039 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keith, G., Richards, A.: Optimization of taxiway routing and runway scheduling. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S., Feron, E.: Robust gate assignment. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, pp. 2991–3002 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S.H., Feron, E., Clarke, J.P.: Assigning gates by resolving physical conflicts. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference, Chicago, USA (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S.H., Feron, E., Clarke, J.P.: Airport gate assignment that minimizes passenger flow in terminals and aircraft congestion on ramps. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, Toronto, Canada, vol. 2, pp. 1226–1238 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Laporte, G.: The traveling salesman problem: An overview of exact and approximate algorithms. European Journal of Operational Research 59(2), 231–247 (1992)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Lim, A., Rodrigues, B., Zhu, Y.: Airport gate scheduling with time windows. Artificial Intelligence Review 24(1), 5–31 (2005)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Marín, Á.: Airport management: Taxi planning. Annals of Operations Research 143(1), 191–202 (2006)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Marín, Á., Codina, E.: Network design: Taxi planning. Annals of Operations Research 157(1), 135–151 (2008)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • de Matosa, P.L., Ormerod, R.: The application of operational research to european air traffic flow management understanding the context. European Journal of Operational Research 123(1), 125–144 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mesgarpour, M., Potts, C.N., Bennell, J.A.: Models for aircraft landing optimization. In: 4th International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2010), Budapest, Hungary, pp. 529–532 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Michalewicz, Z., Fogel, D.B.: How to solve it: Modern metaheuristics, 2nd edn. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Newell, G.: Airport capacity and delays. Transportation Science 13(3), 201–240 (1979)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Nikoleris, T., Gupta, G., Kistler, M.: Detailed estimation of fuel consumption and emissions during aircraft taxi operations at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 16(4), 302–308 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Psaraftis, H.N.: A dynamic programming approach for sequencing groups of identical jobs. Operations Research 28(6), 1347–1359 (1980)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Qi, X., Yang, J., Yu, G.: Scheduling problems in the airline industry. In: Handbook of Scheduling - Algorithms, Models and Performance Analysis, pp. 50.1–50.15. Chapman & Hall/CRC (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport, D.B., Yu, P., Griffin, K., Daviau, C.: Quantitative analysis of uncertainty in airport surface operations. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rathinam, S., Montoya, J., Jung, Y.: An optimization model for reducing aircraft taxi times at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. In: Proceedings of the 26th International Congress of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2008 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ravizza, S., Atkin, J.A.D., Maathuis, M.H., Burke, E.K.: A combined statistical approach and ground movement model for improving taxi time estimations at airports. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2012a) (to appear), http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jors.2012.123

  • Ravizza, S., Chen, J., Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K., Stewart, P.: The trade-off between taxi time and fuel consumption in airport ground movement. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Advanced Systems for Public Transport (CASPT 2012), Santiago, Chile (2012b)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ravizza, S., Atkin, J.A.D., Burke, E.K.: A more realistic approach for airport ground movement optimisation with stand holding. Journal of Scheduling (to appear, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10951-013-0323-3

  • Roling, P.C., Visser, H.G.: Optimal airport surface traffic planning using mixed-integer linear programming. International Journal of Aerospace Engineering 2008(1), 1–11 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sastry, K., Goldberg, D., Kendall, G.: Genetic algorithms. In: Burke, E.K., Kendall, G. (eds.) Search Methodologies, pp. 97–125. Springer (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  • Simaiakis, I., Balakrishnan, H.: Queuing models of airport departure processes for emissions reduction. In: Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Simaiakis, I., Balakrishnan, H.: Impact of congestion on taxi times, fuel burn, and emissions at major airports. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2184, 22–30 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simaiakis, I., Khadilkar, H., Balakrishnan, H., Reynolds, T.G., Hansman, R.J., Reilly, B., Urlass, S.: Demonstration of reduced airport congestion through pushback rate control. In: Proceedings of the 9th USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Research and Development Seminar, Berlin, Germany (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Smeltink, J.W., Soomer, M.J., de Waal, P.R., van der Mei, R.D.: An optimisation model for airport taxi scheduling. In: Proceedings of the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, USA (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, C.: Final approach spacing tool. In: Proceedings of the 2nd USA/Europe Air Traffic Management R&D Seminar, Orlando, USA (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  • Talbi, E.G.: Metaheuristics. In: From Design to Implementation, 1st edn. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  • Trivizas, D.A.: Optimal scheduling with maximum position shift (MPS) constraints: A runway scheduling application. Journal of Navigation 51, 250–266 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, H.P.: Model Building in Mathematical Programming, 4th edn. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu, C., Caves, R.: Research review of air traffic management. Transport Reviews 22, 115–132 (2002)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Yu, G. (ed.): Operations Research in the Airline Industry. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science. Kluwer Academic Publishers (1998)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jason A. D. Atkin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Atkin, J.A.D. (2013). Airport Airside Optimisation Problems. In: Uyar, A., Ozcan, E., Urquhart, N. (eds) Automated Scheduling and Planning. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 505. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39304-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39304-4_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39303-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39304-4

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics