Conference Agenda

Managing incoming air traffic at airports presents a challenge due to the variety of air routes and limited runway capacity. This issue is particularly pronounced in terminal arrival routes, where careful coordination is crucial to avoid congestion. This study introduces an optimization model that addresses approach and landing operations, as well as terminal arrival routes. The model determines runway assignments, terminal arrival route selection, and aircraft trajectories, resulting in a complex optimization problem. To solve this, a Benders decomposition approach is proposed. The master model handles runway assignment and terminal arrival route selection using binary variables, while the submodel focuses on trajectory calculation, optimizing fuel consumption and minimizing delays with continuous variables.

The Gateway Assignment Problem can be specified as follows: Given a set of shipments and a set of flights departing from different gateways, the task is to assign each shipment to a flight such that the total cost is minimized. The loading of flights is constrained by volume and weight capacities. What makes the problem interesting is a complicated cost function that not only considers transport costs from customers to the gateways, but also balances weight and volume utilization of the flights. In addition to presenting the cost function and a MIP model, the talk focuses on practical challenges, such as data issues and vague problem definitions, and how these were solved.