No more conflicts: the development of a generic airport model in a sequence-optimization framework

International audienceComponents of the airport airside such as runways, taxiways and aprons, have a significant impact in the total capacity of the airport system, where capacity is usually considered as maximum number of air traffic movements or number of passengers accommodated in a given period of time. Operations on the airside impact in the propagation of delay and consequently in the perceived level of service by passengers the terminal buildings. This paper put the focus on the airside operations at airports. A methodology for modelling operations on the ground and the successive optimization is proposed. The methodology presented in this paper is generic enough in the sense that it can be applied to any airport. The objective of this work is to come up with a generic tool that can be used by air traffic controllers in order to minimize conflicts on the ground and consequently increase the airport capacit

Implementation of an Optimization and Simulation-Based Approach for Detecting and Resolving Conflicts at Airport

International audienceIn this paper is presented a methodology that uses simulation together with optimization techniques for a conflict detection and resolution at airports. This approach provides more robust solutions to operative problems, since, optimization allows to come up with optimal or suboptimal solutions, on the other hand, simulation allows to take into account other aspects as stochasticity and interactions inside the system. Both the airport airspace (terminal manoeuvring area), and airside (runway taxiways and terminals), were modelled. In this framework, different restrictions such as speed, separation minima between aircraft, and capacity of airside components were taken into account. The airspace was modeled as a network of links and nodes representing the different routes, while the airside was modeled in a low detail, where runway, taxiways and terminals were modeled as servers with a specific capacity. The objective of this work is to detect and resolve conflicts both in the airspace and in the airside and have a balanced traffic load on the ground

Scheduler Design Criteria: Requirements and Considerations

This presentation covers fundamental requirements and considerations for developing schedulers in airport operations. We first introduce performance and functional requirements for airport surface schedulers. Among various optimization problems in airport operations, we focus on airport surface scheduling problem, including runway and taxiway operations. We then describe a basic methodology for airport surface scheduling such as node-link network model and scheduling algorithms previously developed. Next, we explain how to design a mathematical formulation in more details, which consists of objectives, decision variables, and constraints. Lastly, we review other considerations, including optimization tools, computational performance, and performance metrics for evaluation

Robust assignment of airport gates with operational safety constraints

This paper reviews existing approaches to the airport gate assignment problem (AGAP) and presents an optimization model for the problem considering operational safety constraints. The main objective is to minimize the dispersion of gate idle time periods (to get robust optimization) while ensuring appropriate matching between the size of each aircraft and its assigned gate type and avoiding the potential hazard caused by gate apron operational conflict. Genetic algorithm is adopted to solve the problem. An illustrative example is given to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the algorithm. The algorithm performance is further demonstrated using data of a terminal from Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)

Robustness Algorithms for the Airport Gate Assignment Problem

Assigning commercial flights to available airport gates can have a major impact on the efficiency of flight schedules as well as on the level of passenger satisfaction with the service. These assignments also depend on the service requirements of flights and the capacity of stand facilities. Unexpected changes also called perturbations, like those due to air traffic delays, severe weather conditions, or equipment failures, may disrupt the initial assignments and increase the difficulty of maintaining smooth operations, which will detrimentally affect costumer satisfaction. The provision of solutions which reduce the potential detrimental effect of perturbations in the stands already assigned on the day of operation is desirable and some approaches are presented here, and compare between them to help identify their performance and trends

Robustness Algorithms for the Airport Gate Assignment Problem

Assigning commercial flights to available airport gates can have a major impact on the efficiency of flight schedules as well as on the level of passenger satisfaction with the service. These assignments also depend on the service requirements of flights and the capacity of stand facilities. Unexpected changes also called perturbations, like those due to air traffic delays, severe weather conditions, or equipment failures, may disrupt the initial assignments and increase the difficulty of maintaining smooth operations, which will detrimentally affect costumer satisfaction. The provision of solutions which reduce the potential detrimental effect of perturbations in the stands already assigned on the day of operation is desirable and some approaches are presented here, and compare between them to help identify their performance and trends

Ant Colony Algorithm and Simulation for Robust Airport Gate Assignment

Airport gate assignment is core task for airport ground operations. Due to the fact that the departure and arrival time of flights may be influenced by many random factors, the airport gate assignment scheme may encounter gate conflict and many other problems. This paper aims at finding a robust solution for airport gate assignment problem. A mixed integer model is proposed to formulate the problem, and colony algorithm is designed to solve this model. Simulation result shows that, in consideration of robustness, the ability of antidisturbance for airport gate assignment scheme has much improved

Impact of gate assignment on gate-holding departure control strategies

Gate holding reduces congestion by reducing the number of aircraft present on the airport surface at any time, while not starving the runway. Because some departing flights are held at gates, there is a possibility that arriving flights cannot access the gates and have to wait until the gates are cleared. This is called a gate conflict. Robust gate assignment is an assignment that minimizes gate conflicts by assigning gates to aircraft to maximize the time gap between two consecutive flights at the same gate; it makes gate assignment robust, but passengers may walk longer to transfer flights. In order to simulate the airport departure process, a queuing model is introduced. The model is calibrated and validated with actual data from New York La Guardia Airport (LGA) and a U.S. hub airport. Then, the model simulates the airport departure process with the current gate assignment and a robust gate assignment to assess the impact of gate assignment on gate-holding departure control. The results show that the robust gate assignment reduces the number of gate conflicts caused by gate holding compared to the current gate assignment. Therefore, robust gate assignment can be combined with gate-holding departure control to improve operations at congested airports with limited gate resources. Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Syste