Scheduling applied to air traffic control

The aim of the paper is to use a simulation approach to analyze and resolve the problem of how to optimize the use of a resource, in the example an airport runway, by correctly sequencing the aircraft arrivals on it. With the ever increasing congestion at airports around the world, studies into ways of maximizing infrastructures capacity and minimizing delay costs while meeting the goals of the airlines are necessary. A simulation model has been used to estimate the airport capacity and also to optimize the air flow management, optimizing the capacity. The methodology has been applied to the traffic data of the Naples International Airport. Finally, we suggest a mathematic algorithm that is able to optimize, a posteriori, the flight operation under the delay restraint. The algorithm determines the best sequence of aircrafts that minimizes the delays and it maximizes the runway capacity.