Managing departure aircraft release for efficient airport surface operations

This paper presents a model for managing departure aircraft at the spot or gate on the airport surface. The model is applied over two time frames: long term (one hour in future) for collaborative decision making, and short term (immediate) for decisions regarding the release of aircraft. The purpose of the model is to provide the controller a schedule of spot or gate release times optimized for runway utilization. This model was tested in nominal and heavy surface traffic scenarios in a simulated environment, and results indicate average throughput improvement of 10% in high traffic scenarios even with up to two minutes of uncertainty in spot arrival times.