A Framework for Coordinated Surface Operations Planning at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport

An Integer Programming formulation is developed for optimizing surface operations at Dallas-Fort Worth airport, with the goal of assessing the potential benefits of taxi route planning. The model is based on operations in the eastern half of the airport under the most frequently used configuration. The focus is on operational concepts that optimize taxi routes by utilizing different control points on the airport surface. The benefits of two different concepts for optimizing taxiway operations, namely controlled pushback and taxi reroutes are analyzed, for both current data and a projected data set with approximately twice the traffic density. The analysis estimates that: (1) for current traffic densities, controlled pushback would reduce the average departure taxi time by 17% without altering runway schedule conformance, while the benefits of taxi reroutes would be minimal; and (2) for high-density operations, controlled pushback would reduce the average departure taxi time by 18%, while incorporating taxi reroutes would reduce the average arrival taxi time by 14%. Other benefits analyzed for these control strategies include a decrease in the average time spent in runway crossing queues.