Spot Release Planner: Efficient Solution for Detailed Airport Surface Traffic Optimization

The Spot Release Planner (SRP) is an algorithm previously developed by the authors to reduce delay and congestion on the airport surface. The algorithm was developed to provide real time advisories to tower controllers. A Human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation in April 2010 showed that the SRP reduced the average movement area delay of departure aircraft by 64%. The SRP is a two-stage algorithm that considers runway scheduling in the rst stage, and the rest of the ground movement, such as gate pushback and spot release, in the second stage. This decomposition of airport surface scheduling into two stages provides fast computational times and makes the SRP applicable for real-time decision making. However, the two stages also result in the given scheme being a heuristic for solving the complicated airport surface scheduling problem; no guarantees on quality of the obtained solution have been provided. This paper explores the quality of solutions obtained by the SRP and compares them with the optimal solution for airport surface trac. Simulations conducted for the East side of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) show that the SRP solutions are within 14s of the optimal solution for a detailed airport surface planner.