An integrated model for airport runway assignment and aircraft trajectory optimisation

Air traffic management of terminal manoeuvring area involves high complexity as air traffic converges to airports. In addition, air traffic is currently experiencing a remarkable growth despite the COVID19 pandemic effects. This trend, which is expected to continue in the mid and near future, motivates the development of methodologies that improve the efficiency and automatisation of air traffic management processes to efficiently prevent bottlenecks in current airports instead of expanding or building new facilities, which usually implies higher costs. Specifically, runway assignment is of capital importance for the correct exploitation of current airports capacity. In this paper, a mixed integer non-linear model is presented which deals with aircraft approach and landing operations. It integrates decisions regarding runway assignment and trajectory optimisation. Since this problem is difficult to be solved, a Benders decomposition is proposed. The master model deals with runway assignment, resulting in a mixed integer linear programming model. The submodel deals with the trajectory determination problem, resulting in a nonlinear programming model that minimises a combination of fuel consumption and aircraft delay while complying with operational constraints. In addition, a rolling horizon approach is employed for real-size case studies, which systematically optimises operations within 30-min intervals. Computational results on real-world problem instances of Madrid–Barajas airport are reported. Our solutions are found to be tractable and robust in the face of data variations.