Scheduling models for air traffic control in terminal areas

Abstract

We propose a job-shop scheduling model with sequence dependent set-up times and release dates to coordinate both inbound and outbound traffic flows on all the prefixed routes of an airport terminal area and all aircraft operations at the runway complex. The proposed model is suitable for representing several operational constraints (e.g., longitudinal and diagonal separations in specific airspace regions), and different runway configurations (e.g., crossing, parallel, with or without dependent approaches) in a uniform framework. The complexity and the highly dynamic nature of the problem call for heuristic approaches. We propose a fast dynamic local search heuristic algorithm for the job-shop model suitable for considering one of different performance criteria and embedding aircraft position shifting control technique to limit the controllers/pilots’ workload. Finally, we describe in detail the experimental analysis of the proposed model and algorithm applied to two real case studies of Milan-Malpensa and Rome-\ud Fiumicino airport terminal areas

Terminal Control Area Aircraft Scheduling and Trajectory Optimization Approaches

“…To model the TCA-ASP, we follow the approach of Bianco et al [4], based on the no-wait version of the job shop scheduling problem. However, this paper is based on the alternative graph model introduced by Mascis and Pacciarelli [9].…”

Scheduling aircraft take-offs and landings on interdependent and heterogeneous runways

“…Pinol and Beasley (2006), Bencheikh et al (2011), Xiangwei et al (2011, Salehipour et al (2013), Faye (2015), Sabar and Kendall (2015) adopt this definition, but none of these papers consider interdependent runways in their numerical studies. Bianco et al (2006) take approach paths and exit routes into consideration by modeling the ASP as a no-wait job-shop problem. They consider airports with two parallel runways (Milan-Malpensa and Rome-Fiumicino) and assume an aircraft class-independent minimum diagonal separation, as in Table 1b.…”

“…Pinol and Beasley (2006) present two population-based heuristic solution approaches for interdependent and heterogeneous runways. Bianco et al (2006) take approach paths and exit routes into consideration. They define the ASP as a no-wait jobshop problem and provide a heuristic local search algorithm for a two-runway airport with interdependent runways.…”

“…As a benchmark for the quality of the optimized runway schedules, we use an FCFS scheduling rule, as it is applied in practice (Bianco et al, 2006;De Neufville and Odoni, 2013). We optimize the assignment of operations to runways, and only the sequence of operations is given.…”

Aircraft landing problems with aircraft classes

“…They compare both MIP models for single runway instances. A heuristic solution for more detailed model of the terminal area is presented in Bianco et al [6]. Even though most papers dealing with mixed integer programming formulations of the ALP are referring to Psaraftis [14], they assume aircraftdependent separation requirements instead of class-dependent separation requirements.…”