IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/orspec/v39y2017i1d10.1007_s00291-016-0443-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Flight gate assignment and recovery strategies with stochastic arrival and departure times

Author

Listed:
  • Ulrich Dorndorf

    (INFORM GmbH)

  • Florian Jaehn

    (University of Augsburg)

  • Erwin Pesch

    (University of Siegen
    CASiM, HHL Leipzig)

Abstract

We consider the problem of assigning flights to airport gates. We examine the general case in which an aircraft serving a flight may be assigned to different gates for arrival, parking, and departure processing. The objectives can be divided into deterministic and stochastic goals. The former include maximization of the total assignment preference score, a minimal number of unassigned flights during overload periods, and minimization of the number of tows. A special focus lies on the stochastic objectives, which aim at minimizing the expected number of any kind of constraint violations, i.e. not respecting gate closures, violation of shadow restrictions (a situation in which gate assignments may cause blocking of neighboring gates) or of tow time restrictions and classical gate conflicts in which two aircraft are assigned to the same gate and are at the airport at the same time. We show that the minimization of expected gate conflicts can be modeled in a graph theoretical approach using the clique partitioning problem (CPP). We furthermore show that the classical (deterministic) flight gate assignment problem, which can also be modeled using a CPP, can be integrated such that a simple though powerful model emerges, which no longer needs including a dummy gate, which is often used in practical gate assignment models. As constraint violations cannot fully be prevented, recovery strategies become necessary. We present a procedure for recovery planning that has proved its practical relevance at numerous airports. Finally, in an extensive numerical study we test our results on practical data, which contain a statistical analysis of flight arrival and departure times. The tests include a detailed comparison of current robustness measures and state-of-the-art approaches found in literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulrich Dorndorf & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2017. "Flight gate assignment and recovery strategies with stochastic arrival and departure times," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(1), pages 65-93, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:orspec:v:39:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s00291-016-0443-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s00291-016-0443-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00291-016-0443-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00291-016-0443-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dorndorf, Ulrich, 2002. "Project scheduling with time windows: from theory to applications," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 3401, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    2. Ulrich Dorndorf & Erwin Pesch & Toàn Phan-Huy, 2000. "A Time-Oriented Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling with Generalised Precedence Constraints," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(10), pages 1365-1384, October.
    3. Dorndorf, Ulrich & Drexl, Andreas & Nikulin, Yury & Pesch, Erwin, 2007. "Flight gate scheduling: State-of-the-art and recent developments," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 326-334, June.
    4. Nikulin, Yury, 2006. "Robustness in combinatorial optimization and scheduling theory: An extended annotated bibliography," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 606, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    5. Yan, Shangyao & Tang, Ching-Hui, 2007. "A heuristic approach for airport gate assignments for stochastic flight delays," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 180(2), pages 547-567, July.
    6. List, George F. & Wood, Bryan & Nozick, Linda K. & Turnquist, Mark A. & Jones, Dean A. & Kjeldgaard, Edwin A. & Lawton, Craig R., 2003. "Robust optimization for fleet planning under uncertainty," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 209-227, May.
    7. Ulrich Dorndorf & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2008. "Modelling Robust Flight-Gate Scheduling as a Clique Partitioning Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 292-301, August.
    8. H Ding & A Lim & B Rodrigues & Y Zhu, 2004. "New heuristics for over-constrained flight to gate assignments," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 55(7), pages 760-768, July.
    9. Bolat, Ahmet, 2000. "Procedures for providing robust gate assignments for arriving aircrafts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 63-80, January.
    10. Ulrich Dorndorf & Erwin Pesch, 1994. "Fast Clustering Algorithms," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 6(2), pages 141-153, May.
    11. Guépet, J. & Acuna-Agost, R. & Briant, O. & Gayon, J.P., 2015. "Exact and heuristic approaches to the airport stand allocation problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(2), pages 597-608.
    12. Drexl, Andreas & Nikulin, Yury, 2006. "Fuzzy multicriteria flight gate assignment," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 605, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    13. Ulrich Dorndorf & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2012. "Flight gate scheduling with respect to a reference schedule," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 177-187, April.
    14. Şeker, Merve & Noyan, Nilay, 2012. "Stochastic optimization models for the airport gate assignment problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 438-459.
    15. John M. Mulvey & Robert J. Vanderbei & Stavros A. Zenios, 1995. "Robust Optimization of Large-Scale Systems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 264-281, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pternea, Moschoula & Haghani, Ali, 2019. "An aircraft-to-gate reassignment framework for dealing with schedule disruptions," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 116-132.
    2. Xu, Liang & Zhang, Chao & Xiao, Feng & Wang, Fan, 2017. "A robust approach to airport gate assignment with a solution-dependent uncertainty budget," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 458-478.
    3. Linlin Chen & Shuihua Han & Chaokan Du & Zongwei Luo, 2022. "A real-time integrated optimization of the aircraft holding time and rerouting under risk area," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 310(1), pages 7-26, March.
    4. Daş, Gülesin Sena & Gzara, Fatma & Stützle, Thomas, 2020. "A review on airport gate assignment problems: Single versus multi objective approaches," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    5. Bert Dijk & Bruno F. Santos & Joao P. Pita, 2019. "The recoverable robust stand allocation problem: a GRU airport case study," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 41(3), pages 615-639, September.
    6. Li, Mingjie & Hao, Jin-Kao & Wu, Qinghua, 2022. "Learning-driven feasible and infeasible tabu search for airport gate assignment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(1), pages 172-186.
    7. Evler, Jan & Asadi, Ehsan & Preis, Henning & Fricke, Hartmut, 2021. "Airline ground operations: Optimal schedule recovery with uncertain arrival times," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    8. Kim, Junyoung & Goo, Byungju & Roh, Youngjoo & Lee, Chungmok & Lee, Kyungsik, 2023. "A branch-and-price approach for airport gate assignment problem with chance constraints," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 1-26.
    9. Hagspihl, Thomas & Kolisch, Rainer & Fontaine, Pirmin & Schiffels, Sebastian, 2024. "Apron layout planning–Optimal positioning of aircraft stands," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    10. Hagspihl, Thomas & Kolisch, Rainer & Ruf, Christian & Schiffels, Sebastian, 2022. "Dynamic gate configurations at airports: A network optimization approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(3), pages 1133-1148.
    11. Yin, Suwan & Han, Ke & Ochieng, Washington Yotto & Sanchez, Daniel Regueiro, 2022. "Joint apron-runway assignment for airport surface operations," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 76-100.
    12. Schultz, Michael & Evler, Jan & Asadi, Ehsan & Preis, Henning & Fricke, Hartmut & Wu, Cheng-Lung, 2020. "Future aircraft turnaround operations considering post-pandemic requirements," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ulrich Dorndorf & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2012. "Flight gate scheduling with respect to a reference schedule," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 177-187, April.
    2. Zhang, Dong & Klabjan, Diego, 2017. "Optimization for gate re-assignment," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 260-284.
    3. Bert Dijk & Bruno F. Santos & Joao P. Pita, 2019. "The recoverable robust stand allocation problem: a GRU airport case study," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 41(3), pages 615-639, September.
    4. Ulrich Dorndorf & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2008. "Modelling Robust Flight-Gate Scheduling as a Clique Partitioning Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 292-301, August.
    5. Daş, Gülesin Sena & Gzara, Fatma & Stützle, Thomas, 2020. "A review on airport gate assignment problems: Single versus multi objective approaches," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    6. Li, Mingjie & Hao, Jin-Kao & Wu, Qinghua, 2022. "Learning-driven feasible and infeasible tabu search for airport gate assignment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(1), pages 172-186.
    7. Dorndorf, Ulrich & Drexl, Andreas & Nikulin, Yury & Pesch, Erwin, 2005. "Flight gate scheduling: State-of-the-art and recent developments," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 584, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    8. Hagspihl, Thomas & Kolisch, Rainer & Fontaine, Pirmin & Schiffels, Sebastian, 2024. "Apron layout planning–Optimal positioning of aircraft stands," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    9. Şeker, Merve & Noyan, Nilay, 2012. "Stochastic optimization models for the airport gate assignment problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 438-459.
    10. Amadeo Ascó, 2016. "An Analysis of Robustness Approaches for the Airport Baggage Sorting Station Assignment Problem," Journal of Optimization, Hindawi, vol. 2016, pages 1-19, September.
    11. Jaehn, Florian & Neumann, Simone, 2015. "Airplane boarding," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 244(2), pages 339-359.
    12. Xu, Liang & Zhang, Chao & Xiao, Feng & Wang, Fan, 2017. "A robust approach to airport gate assignment with a solution-dependent uncertainty budget," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 458-478.
    13. Jovanovic, Raka & Sanfilippo, Antonio P. & Voß, Stefan, 2023. "Fixed set search applied to the clique partitioning problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 65-81.
    14. Skorupski, Jacek & Żarów, Piotr, 2021. "Dynamic management of aircraft stand allocation," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    15. Guépet, J. & Acuna-Agost, R. & Briant, O. & Gayon, J.P., 2015. "Exact and heuristic approaches to the airport stand allocation problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 246(2), pages 597-608.
    16. Yin, Suwan & Han, Ke & Ochieng, Washington Yotto & Sanchez, Daniel Regueiro, 2022. "Joint apron-runway assignment for airport surface operations," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 76-100.
    17. Bagamanova, Margarita & Mota, Miguel Mujica, 2020. "A multi-objective optimization with a delay-aware component for airport stand allocation," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    18. Oleksandra Yezerska & Foad Mahdavi Pajouh & Alexander Veremyev & Sergiy Butenko, 2019. "Exact algorithms for the minimum s-club partitioning problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 276(1), pages 267-291, May.
    19. Zhao, Peixin & Han, Xue & Wan, Di, 2021. "Evaluation of the airport ferry vehicle scheduling based on network maximum flow model," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    20. Yi Zhou & Jin-Kao Hao & Adrien Goëffon, 2016. "A three-phased local search approach for the clique partitioning problem," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 32(2), pages 469-491, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:orspec:v:39:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s00291-016-0443-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.