Airport Ground Movement: Real World Data Sets and Approaches to Handling Uncertainty

1 Abstract Two related topics are considered in this presentation, both concerning the ground movement of aircraft. The first describes the collection of data from publicly available websites and the second discusses the issue of uncertainty in this problem. The airport ground movement problem [1] connects together the problems of runway scheduling and gate allocation, which are often tackled separately in the research literature. The overall problem involves allocating routes for aircraft to take as they proceed along the taxiways between the runways and the gates (stands), and timings or orders for them to take them. The aim is to find a schedule that reduces delays, reduces the fuel burn associated with taxiing, and is resilient to last-minute changes. This represents a challenging problem because there are typically several pinch points where congestion is more likely to occur, and the uncertainty inherent in aircraft landing times, pushback times and taxi speeds means that routes need to be constantly updated to reflect the current situation. In addition, any solution method must be efficient enough that it can be executed within a couple of minutes, at most, to accommodate incoming, changing data. Furthermore, once an aircraft has had a route allocated and commenced its movement, it is undesirable (and