Abstract
Airport runway optimization is an ongoing challenge for air traffic controllers. Since demand for air-transportation is predicted to increase, there is a need to realize additional take-off and landing slots through better runway scheduling. In this paper, we review the techniques and tools of operational research and management science that are used for scheduling aircraft landings and take-offs. The main solution techniques include dynamic programming, branch and bound, heuristics and meta-heuristics.




Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abela, J., Abramson, D., Krishnamoorthy, M., De Silva, A., & Mills, G. (1993). Computing optimal schedules for landing aircraft. In Proceedings of 12th national conference of the Australian Society for Operations Research, Adelaide, Australia (pp. 71–90).
Anagnostakis, I. (2004). A multi-objective, decomposition-based algorithm design methodology and its application to runway operations planning. PhD thesis, Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, MIT, USA.
Anagnostakis, I., & Clarke, J.-P. (2002). Runway operations planning: a two-stage heuristic algorithm. In AIAA aircraft, technology, integration and operations forum, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Anagnostakis, I., & Clarke, J.-P. (2003). Runway operations planning: a two-stage solution methodology. In Proceedings of the 36th annual Hawaii international conference on system science (HICSS’03), Big Island, HI, USA.
Artiouchine, K., Baptiste, P., & Durr, C. (2008). Runway sequencing with holding patterns. European Journal of Operational Research, 189, 1254–1266.
Atkin, J. A. D. (2008). On-line decision support for take-off runway scheduling with uncertain taxi times at London Heathrow airport. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, UK.
Atkin, J. A. D., Burke, E. K., Greenwood, J. S., & Reeson, D. (2004). A metaheuristic approach to aircraft departure scheduling at London Heathrow airport. In Electronic proceedings of the 9th international conference on computer-aided scheduling of public transport, San Diego, California, USA.
Atkin, J. A. D., Burke, E. K., Greenwood, J. S., & Reeson, D. (2006). An examination of take-off scheduling constraints at London Heathrow airport. In Electronic proceedings of the 10th international conference on computer-aided scheduling of public transport (CASPT2006).
Atkin, J. A. D., Burke, E. K., Greenwood, J. S., & Reeson, D. (2007). Hybrid metaheuristics to aid runway scheduling at London Heathrow airport. Transportation Science, 41, 90–106.
Atkin, J. A. D., Burke, E. K., Greenwood, J. S., & Reeson, D. (2008). On-line decision support for take-off runway scheduling with uncertain taxi times at London Heathrow airport. Journal of Scheduling, 11, 323–346.
Balakrishnan, H., & Chandran, B. (2006). Scheduling aircraft landings under constrained position shifting. In AIAA guidance, navigation and control conference and exhibit, Keystone, Colorado, USA.
Balakrishnan, H., & Chandran, B. (2007). Efficient and equitable departure scheduling in real-time: new approaches to old problems. In USA/Europe air traffic management R&D seminar, Barcelona, Spain.
Bauerle, N., Engelhardt-Funke, O., & Kolonko, M. (2007). On the waiting time of arriving aircraft and the capacity of airports with one or two runways. European Journal of Operational Research, 177, 1180–1196.
Bayen, A. M., Tomlin, C. J., Ye, Y., & Zhang, J. (2004). An approximation algorithm for scheduling aircraft with holding time. In 43rd IEEE conference on decision and control, Atlantis, Paradise Island, Bahamas.
Bazargan, M., Fleming, K., & Subramanian, P. (2002). A simulation study to investigate runway capacity using TAAM. In Proceedings of the 34th winter simulation conference (WSC’02), San Diego, California, USA.
Beasley, J. E. (1990). OR-library: distributing test problems by electronic mail. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 41, 1069–1072.
Beasley, J. E., Krishnamoorthy, M., Sharaiha, Y. M., & Abramson, D. (2000). Scheduling aircraft landings—the static case. Transportation Science, 34, 180–197.
Beasley, J. E., Krishnamoorthy, M., Sharaiha, Y. M., & Abramson, D. (2004). Displacement problem and dynamically scheduling aircraft landings. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 55, 54–64.
Beasley, J. E., Sonander, J., & Havelock, P. (2001). Scheduling aircraft landing at London Heathrow using a population heuristic. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 52, 483–493.
Bencheikh, G., Boukachour, J., Alaoui, A. E. H., & Khoukhi, F. E. (2009). Hybrid method for aircraft landing scheduling based on a job shop formulation. International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, 9, 78–88.
Bennell, J. A., Mesgarpour, M., & Potts, C. N. (2011). Airport runway scheduling. 4OR, 9, 115–138.
Bianco, L., & Bielli, M. (1993). System aspects and optimization models in ATC planning. In L. Bianco & A. R. Odoni (Eds.), Large scale computation and information processing in ATC (pp. 47–100). Berlin: Springer.
Bianco, L., Dell’Olmo, P., & Giordani, S. (1997). Scheduling models and algorithms for TMA traffic management. In L. Bianco, P. Dell’Olmo, & A. R. Odoni (Eds.), Modelling and simulation for air traffic management (pp. 139–167). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Bianco, L., Dell’Olmo, P., & Giordani, S. (1999). Minimizing total completion time subject to release dates and sequence-dependent processing times. Annals of Operations Research, 86, 393–415.
Bianco, L., Dell’Olmo, P., & Giordani, S. (2006). Scheduling models for air traffic control in terminal areas. Journal of Scheduling, 9, 223–253.
Blumstein, A. (1959). The landing capacity of a runway. Operations Research, 7, 752–763.
Brentnall, A. R. (2006). Aircraft arrival management. PhD thesis, University of Southampton, UK.
Brentnall, A. R., & Cheng, R. C. H. (2009). Some effects of aircraft arrival sequence algorithms. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 60, 962–972.
Brinton, C. R. (1992). An implicit enumeration algorithm for arrival aircraft scheduling. In Proceedings of the IEEE/AIAA 11th digital avionics systems conference, Seattle, WA, USA.
Capri, S., & Ignaccolo, M. (2004). Genetic algorithms for solving the aircraft-sequencing problem: the introduction of departures into the dynamic model. Journal of Air Transport Management, 10, 345–351.
Carr, G. C., Erzberger, H., & Neuman, F. (2000). Fast-time study of airline-influenced arrival sequencing and scheduling. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 23, 526–531.
Chandran, B., & Balakrishnan, H. (2007). A dynamic programming algorithm for robust runway scheduling. In Proceedings of the American control conference, New York, NY, USA.
Cheng, V. H. L., Crawford, L. S., & Menon, P. K. (1999). Air traffic control using genetic search techniques. In Proceedings of the IEEE international conference on control applications, Hawaii, HA, USA.
Ciesielski, V., & Scerri, P. (1997). An anytime algorithm for scheduling of aircraft landing times using genetic algorithms. Australian Journal of Intelligent Information Processing Systems, 4, 206–213.
Ciesielski, V., & Scerri, P. (1998). Real time genetic scheduling of aircraft landing times. In D. Fogel (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE international conference on evolutionary computation (ICEC’98), Anchorage, Alsaka (pp. 360–364).
Craig, A., Ketzscher, R., Leese, R. A., Noble, S. D., Parrott, K., Preater, J., Wilson, R. E., & Wood, D. A. (2001). The sequencing of aircraft departures. In 40th European study group with industry, Keele, UK.
de Neufville, R., & Odoni, A. R. (2003). Airport systems: planning, design, and management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Dear, R. (1976). The dynamic scheduling of aircraft in the near terminal area (Technical Report, R76-9). Flight Transportation Laboratory, MIT, USA.
Dear, R. G., & Sherif, Y. S. (1989). The dynamic scheduling of aircraft in high density terminal areas. Microelectrons and Reliability, 29, 743–749.
Dear, R. G., & Sherif, Y. S. (1991). An algorithm for computer assisted sequencing and scheduling of terminal area operation. Transportation Research. Part A: General, 25, 129–139.
Duke, G. (2009). Air traffic control (10th ed.). UK: Ian Allan.
Ernst, A. T., Krishnamoorthy, M., & Storer, R. H. (1999). Heuristic and exact algorithms for scheduling aircraft landings. Networks, 34, 229–241.
EUROCONTROL (2009). SESAR Web site.
FAA (2009). NextGen Web site.
Fahle, T., Feldmann, R., Gotz, S., Grothklags, S., & Monien, B. (2003). The aircraft sequencing problem. In Computer science in perspective, LNCS (Vol. 2598, pp. 152–166).
Filar, J. A., Manyem, P., & White, K. (2001). How airlines and airports recover from schedule perturbations: a survey. Annals of Operations Research, 108, 315–333.
Hansen, J. V. (2004). Genetic search methods in air traffic control. Computers & Operations Research, 3, 445–459.
Hu, X.-B., & Chen, W.-H. (2005a). Genetic algorithm based on receding horizon control for arrival sequencing and scheduling. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 18, 633–642.
Hu, X.-B., & Chen, W.-H. (2005b). Receding horizon control for aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 6, 189–197.
Hu, X.-B., & Di Paolo, E. (2008). Binary-representation-based genetic algorithm for aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 9, 301–310.
Hu, X.-B., & Di Paolo, E. (2009). An efficient genetic algorithm with uniform crossover for air traffic control. Computers & Operations Research, 36, 245–259.
Idris, H. R. (2001). Observation and analysis of departure operations at Boston Logan international airport. PhD thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, USA.
Idris, H. R., Delcaire, B., Anagnostakis, I., Hall, W. D., Clarke, J.-P., Hansman, R. J., Feron, E., & Odoni, A. R. (1998a). Observations of departure processes at Logan airport to support the development of departure planning tools. In The 2nd USA/Europe air traffic management R&D seminar, Orlando, USA.
Idris, H. R., Delcaire, B., Anagnostakis, I., Hall, W. D., & Pujet, N. (1998b). In Identification of flow constraint and control points in departure operations at airport systems. In AIAA guidance, navigation, and control conference and exhibit, Boston, MA, USA.
Isaacson, D. R., Davis, T. J., & Robinson, J. E. (1997). Knowledge-based runway assignment for arrival aircraft in the terminal area. In Proceedings of AIAA guidance, navigation, and control conference, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Lee, H., & Balakrishnan, H. (2008). Fuel cost, delay and throughput tradeoffs in runway scheduling. In Proceedings of American control conference (ACC 08), Seattle, Washington, USA.
Luenberger, R. A. (1998). A traveling-salesman-based approach to aircraft scheduling in the terminal area (Technical report, NASA Technical Memorandum 100062).
Mesgarpour, M. (2012). Airport runway optimization. PhD thesis, School of Mathematics, University of Southampton, UK.
Mesgarpour, M., Potts, C. N., & Bennell, J. A. (2010). Models for aircraft landing optimization. In Proceedings of the 4th international conference on research in air transportation (ICRAT2010), Budapest, Hungary.
Moser, I., & Hendtlass, T. (2007). Solving dynamic single-runway aircraft landing problems with extremal optimization. In Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE symposium on computational intelligence in scheduling (CI-Sched 2007), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
Neuman, F., & Erzberger, H. (1991). Analysis of delay reducing and fuel saving sequencing and spacing algorithms for arrival traffic (Technical report, TM-103880). Ames Research Center, NASA, USA.
Newell, G. F. (1979). Airport capacity and delays. Transportation Science, 13, 201–241.
Pinol, H., & Beasley, J. E. (2006). Scatter search and bionomic algorithms for the aircraft landing problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 171, 439–462.
Psaraftis, H. N. (1978). A dynamic programming approach to the aircraft sequencing problem (Technical report, R78-4). Flight Transportation Laboratory, MIT, USA.
Psaraftis, H. N. (1980). A dynamic programming approach for sequencing groups of identical jobs. Operations Research, 28, 1347–1359.
Pujet, N., Delcaire, B., & Feron, E. (1999). Input-output modelling and control of the departure process of congested airports. In Proceedings of AIAA guidance, navigation and control conference, and exhibit, Portland, OR, USA.
Randall, M. C. (2002). Scheduling aircraft landings using ant colony optimisation. In Proceedings of the IASTED international conference artificial intelligence and soft computing, Banff, Canada.
Soomer, M. J., & Franx, G. J. (2008). Scheduling aircraft landings using airlines’ preferences. European Journal of Operational Research, 190, 277–291.
Stevens, G. (1995). An approach to scheduling aircraft landing times using genetic algorithms. Honours thesis, Department of Computer Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Tang, K., Wang, Z., Cao, X., & Zhang, J. (2008). A multi-objective evolutionary approach to aircraft landing scheduling. In Proceedings of IEEE congress on evolutionary computation, CEC 2008, Hong Kong.
Tether, B. S., & Metcalfe, J. S. (2003). Horndal at Heathrow? Capacity creation through co-operation and system evolution. Industrial and Corporate Change, 12, 437–476.
Trivizas, D. A. (1998). Optimal scheduling with maximum position shift (MPS) constraints: a runway scheduling application. Journal of Navigation, 51, 250–266.
van Leeuwen, P., Hesselink, H., & Rohling, J. (2002). Scheduling aircraft using constraint satisfaction. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 76, 252–268.
van Leeuwen, P., & van Hanxleden Houwert, N. (2003). Scheduling aircraft using constraint relaxation. In Proceedings of the 22nd workshop of the UK planning and scheduling special interest group, Glasgow, UK.
Veidal, E. (2007). Scheduling aircraft landings—the dynamic case. Master’s thesis, Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark.
Wen, M. (2005). Algorithms of scheduling aircraft landing problem. Master’s thesis, Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark.
Wen, M., Larsen, J., & Clausen, J. (2005). An exact algorithm for aircraft landing problem (IMM-Technical Report-2005-12). Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark.
Yu, S., Cao, X., Hu, M., Du, W., & Zhang, J. (2009). A real-time schedule method for aircraft landing scheduling problem based on cellular automaton. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM/SIGEVO summit on genetic and evolutionary computation, Shanghai, China.
Acknowledgement
This work has been co-financed by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL) under its Research Grant scheme. The content of the work does not necessarily reflect the official position of EUROCONTROL on the matter.
©2011, EUROCONTROL and the University of Southampton. All Rights reserved.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This is an updated version of the paper that appeared in 4OR, 9(2), 115–138 (2011).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bennell, J.A., Mesgarpour, M. & Potts, C.N. Airport runway scheduling. Ann Oper Res 204, 249–270 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-012-1268-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-012-1268-1