Harmony Search Algorithm for the Multiple Runways Aircraft Landing Scheduling Problem

This paper proposes a Harmony Search (HS) algorithm to solve the multiple runways aircraft landing scheduling (ALS) problem. ALS is a combinatorial optimization problem that has been recognized as an NP-hard problem. It deals with assigning landing times and runways for a set of arrival aircrafts. Each aircraft has its predefined target landing time within a time window, and a separation time between each successive pairs of aircrafts. The objective of ALS problem is to minimize the deviation from the target landing time of each aircraft subject to a set of constraints. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated on thirteen benchmark instances ranging from 10 to 500 aircrafts, and 1 to 5 runways. The results show that the proposed algorithm works considerably well on small-sized instances