Optimizing Integrated Arrival, Departure and Surface Operations Under Uncertainty

In airports and surrounding terminal airspaces, the integration of arrival, departure and surface scheduling and routing have the potential to improve operations efficiency. Recent research developed a mixed-integer-linear-programming algorithm-based scheduler for integrated arrival and departure operations in the presence of uncertainty. This paper extends previous research to the surface to integrate taxiway and runway operations. The developed algorithm is capable of computing optimal aircraft schedules and routings that reflect the integration of air and ground operations. A preliminary study case is conducted for a set of thirteen aircraft evolving in a model of the Los Angeles International Airport surface and terminal areas. Using historical data, a representative traffic scenario is constructed and probabilistic distributions of pushback delay and arrival gate delay are obtained. To assess the benefits of optimization, a First-Come-First-Served algorithm approach comparison is realized. Evaluation results demonstrate that the optimization can help identify runway sequences and schedules that reduce gate waiting time without increasing average taxi times.