Hybrid Metaheuristics to Aid Runway Scheduling at London Heathrow Airport

Abstract

A lthough London Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world, it has only one runway for use by departing aircraft at any time. Separations are required between each pair of aircraft at takeoff depending on their routes, weights, and speeds-to ensure safety. Efficient scheduling of the aircraft for takeoff can reduce the total separations and increase throughput. A runway controller is responsible for takeoff scheduling. This is a very intensive job with responsibility for all communication with aircraft and continuous monitoring to assure safety. The high workload limits the number of aircraft that the controller can take account of when scheduling. The geometry of the runway holding points adds physical constraints to the reordering of aircraft that are usually ignored in the academic literature. We present models for evaluating a schedule and determining the effects of the physical constraints. We propose a hybrid metaheuristic system that takes account of more aircraft than a human controller can handle, and so can aid the runway controller by recommending schedules that anticipate some future problems. We present results to show the effectiveness of this system, and we evaluate those results against real-world schedules.

Fifty years of scheduling: a survey of milestones

“…Atkin et al (2007) consider the take-off problem at Heathrow. In their model, aircraft can be regarded as jobs, with each job having a target time for take-off, around which is built a 15-minute time window.…”

A combined statistical approach and ground movement model for improving taxi time estimations at airports

“…Taxi times are already needed by several existing search algorithms for take-off time prediction and take-off sequencing (Atkin et al, 2007;Eurocontrol, 2010) and for allocating appropriate stand holds to aircraft to absorb ground delay at the gate/ stand, decreasing the fuel burn and environmental effects (Burgain et al, 2009;Atkin et al, 2010a). Although the effects have been less well studied, taxi times are also useful for arrivals, being necessary for predicting stand/ gate arrival times, to ensure that adequate resources are available at the correct time (Eurocontrol, 2010).…”

A more realistic approach for airport ground movement optimisation with stand holding

“…From an optimisation point of view, ground movement of aircraft can be considered to be one of the most important airside operations at an airport, since it links several other problems together, such as the runway sequencing problems for arrivals and/or departures (Atkin et al 2007), the stand holding problem (Atkin et al 2011a) and the gate assignment problem (Dorndorf et al 2007). For a comprehensive literature review of ground movement research and the integration with other operations, we point the interested reader to a recently published review (Atkin et al 2010b).…”