Multiple-Point Integrated Scheduling of Terminal Area Traffic

This paper presents a systematic study of the integrated scheduling and runway assignment of both arriving and departing traffic over an airport using a multiple-point scheduling scheme. Scheduling locations include runway thresholds as conventionally done and fixes over the terminal airspace and gates. This general runway scheduling problem is formulated asmixed-integer linear programming. Solution variables include scheduled times of arrival at the series of locations within a specified time window. In addition, both taxi and airborne routes for aircraft that are being scheduled are included as solution variables, from which optimal runway assignments can be determined. In this paper, the need for multiple-point integrated scheduling of both arriving and departing traffic is first discussed. Mathematical expressions of constraints and the optimization criterion are examined.Representation of the terminal route structure for solving this problem is explained. Real traffic data from the John F. Kennedy International airport is used in extensive numerical solutions to evaluate the computational speed and scheduling efficiency of different algorithms.