Runway scheduling during winter operations

•We propose a new optimization model which simultaneously schedules aircraft and snow removals on multiple airport runways.•We show that an integrated scheduling of aircraft and snow removals signicantly reduces aircraft delay cost during winter operations.•Our exact algorithm yields close-to-optima...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOmega (Oxford) Vol. 102; p. 102325
Main Authors Pohl, Maximilian, Kolisch, Rainer, Schiffer, Maximilian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2021
Subjects
Airport operations
Pruning rules
Scheduling
Start heuristic
Valid inequalities
Pruning rules
Scheduling
Start heuristic
Airport operations
Valid inequalities
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Summary:•We propose a new optimization model which simultaneously schedules aircraft and snow removals on multiple airport runways.•We show that an integrated scheduling of aircraft and snow removals signicantly reduces aircraft delay cost during winter operations.•Our exact algorithm yields close-to-optimal runway schedules within a few seconds.•We derive decision principles that support human planners in scheduling snow removals manually. This paper presents an optimization model for the runway scheduling problem under consideration of winter operations. During periods of snowfall, runways have to be intermittently closed in order to clear them from snow, ice, and slush. To support human planners with the resulting complex scheduling tasks, we propose an integrated optimization model to simultaneously plan snow removal for multiple runways and to assign runways as well as take-off and landing times to aircraft. We formulate the model as a mixed-integer linear problem. To improve the computational tractability of our exact approach, we develop pruning rules and valid inequalities. Additionally, we derive initial start solutions heuristically. We validate and benchmark the model with realistic data from a large international airport and compare the results to a practice-based heuristic approach. We also demonstrate the applicability of our algorithm to large-scale aircraft landing instances from the literature. A computational study shows that our solution approach computes runway schedules which cause significantly less aircraft delay cost within a few seconds.
ISSN:0305-0483
1873-5274
DOI:10.1016/j.omega.2020.102325