Airport gate position estimation for minimum total costs--Approximate closed form solution

Abstract

A method to determine the optimum number of gate positions at an airport terminal, which minimizes the sum of the cost of gates and the cost of delays to aircraft is presented. It is based on an approximate procedure to determine the total deterministic delay to aircraft caused by a limited number of gates, given information regarding the peaking of the aircraft arrival rate, and the number of peaks per day. Closed-form solutions are obtained for the cases of one peak and several identical nonoverlapping peaks, respectively. The optimum number of gates required for the Calgary International Airport, based on a common gate use policy, is reported.