Using Stochastic and Deterministic Approaches for Integrating Freight Movement and Aircraft Taxiing to Solve the Gate Assignment Problem

With the increase in fuel prices, the efficient movement of aircraft around an airport can impact the profitability of a flight and an airline. The assignment of a flight to a specific gate not only impacts passenger satisfaction, but also impacts the efficient movement of aircraft from the departure gate to the runway. There have been bodies of research investigating aircraft taxi problems and gate assignment problems. However, each of these research bodies has not included the effects of the other research areas into their respective areas. This research presents a proposed framework that integrates the passenger or freight movement within a terminal with the taxiing of the aircraft to support an integrated approach to solving the gate assignment problem. A solution technique that incorporates a job shop scheduling solution method is presented and demonstrates that a large problem can be solved efficiently and in a short time using both deterministic and stochastic data