A heuristic approach for solving an integrated gate reassignment and taxi scheduling problem

• Published in: Journal of air transport management 2017-07, Vol.62, p.189-196
• Main Authors: Yu, Chuhang, Zhang, Dong, Henry Lau, H.Y.K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Gate reassignment; Heuristics; Set partition model; Taxiway scheduling
• ISSN: 0969-6997; 1873-2089
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jairtraman.2017.04.006

Capacity limitation of airport ground operation is one of the major limiting factors in air traffic operation. The congestion on the gate and taxiway causes severe delay and propagate effect on the flight schedule. This paper considers the problem of integrated gate reassignment and taxiway scheduling, in which complex constraints related to runway restriction, gate allocation and taxiway conflict are all incorporated when determining the schedule. To solve this problem, we propose a novel heuristic approach. First, all possible aircraft schedules are enumerated by disretizing the waiting time along the path. Then, the cost is evaluated for each schedule and the conflict detection is conducted to generate constraint sets. Finally, we propose a set partition model, in which each decision variable denotes a candidate schedule that takes into account the possible constraints when generated. This method is compared with a sequential method that solves gate reassignment and taxiway scheduling problem separately. Computational results highlight the strength of our method. •We simultaneously consider more practical constraints.•An efficient heuristic for IGRTSP is proposed.•Extensive numerical studies are conducted to validate our methodology.