Benders’ decomposition algorithm to solve bi-level bi-objective scheduling of aircrafts and gate assignment under uncertainty

Management and scheduling of flights and assignment of gates to aircraft play a significant role to improve the performance of the airport, due to the growing number of flights and decreasing the flight times. This research addresses the assignement and scheduling problem of runways and gates simultaneously. Moreover, this research is the first study that considers the constraint of unavailability of runway’s and the uncertain parameters relating to both areas of runway and gate assignment. One of the distinguishing contributions of the proposed model is that the problem is formulated as a bi-level bi-objective one. The leader objective function minimizes the total waiting time for runways and gates for all aircrafts based on their importance coefficient. Meanwhile, the total distance traveled by all passengers in the airport terminal is minimized by a follower objective function. To solve the proposed model, Benders’ decomposition method is applied. Empirical data are used to show the validation and application of the proposed model.  A comparison shows the effectiveness of the model and its significant impact on decreasing the costs.