Scatter search and bionomic algorithms for the aircraft landing problem (with H. Pinol), European Journal of Operational Research, vol 171, 2006, pp439-462

The problem of deciding how to land aircraft approaching an airport involves assigning each aircraft to an appropriate runway, computing a landing sequence for each runway and scheduling the landing time for each aircraft. Runway allocation, sequencing and scheduling for each aircraft must ensure the scheduled landing time lies within a prede.ned time window and meet separation time requirements with other aircraft. The objective is to achieve e.ective runway use.

In this paper, the multiple runway case of the static Aircraft Landing Problem is considered. Two heuristic techniques are presented: Scatter Search and the Bionomic Algorithm, population heuristic approaches that have not been applied to this problem before.

Computational results are presented for publicly available test problems involving up to 500 aircraft and .ve runways showing that feasible solutions of good quality can be produced relatively quickly.

Keywords: metaheuristic; genetic algorithm; population heuristic; transportation; aircraft landing

J E Beasley