Modeling and Simulating Airport Surface Operations with Gate Conflicts

The Surface Operations Simulator and Scheduler (SOSS) is a fast-time simulation of the airport surface used to rapidly develop and test new surface scheduling concepts. Gate conflicts present a challenge for surface scheduling. A late departure pushback or early arrival sharing the same gate can cause a gate conflict, which if left unmanaged, can lead to surface gridlock. Surface scheduling concepts that meter departures at their gates can increase the likelihood of gate conflicts. In real operations, hardstand areas are used to temporality park aircraft out of the way to avoid gate conflicts. New SOSS models and functionality for hardstand operations were developed to simulate gate conflict management approaches using hardstands to temporarily park either the arrival or departure out of the way of the other. Four gate conflict management approaches were simulated with surface scheduling and their effects on surface operations were compared. The four gate conflict management approaches each allowed a unique subset of resolution actions including early departure pushback, sending the departure to the hardstand, and sending the arrival to the hardstand. The gate conflict management approaches allowing arrivals to be sent to the hardstand were found to be most successful in resolving the gate conflicts and maintaining scheduler performance measured by takeoff time predictability.