Optimization of aircraft taxi movements and gate allocation in the airports

Rapidly increasing demand for air transportation leads to serious capacity problems at major airports such as delays and congestions. The extra operational costs introduced by these delays become more important for the airline companies and enterprises. The allocation of parking gates plays an active role in reduction of these delays. Well planned gate allocation reduces or even eliminates ground holds at taxiway intersections between arriving and departing traffic. This situation is defıned as Gate Assignment Problem (GAP). The GAP especially occurs because of the cumulative effects of delays during take-off, en-route and final approach. These delays cause not only in-efficient use of the gates but also increase of ground holds at taxiway intersections. In the conventional approach gates are assigned using slot allocation techniques which require strategic planning done before flights. Therefore they do not take the possible cumulative delays during the flight into account. This study proposes a hybrid dynamic gate allocation model in attempt to minimize the effect of these delays using a more tactical gate allocation algorithm. The proposed algorithm assigns available gates to arriving aircraft when they establish on the final approach course. Using fast time simulation technique, this model have been analized and compared with the conventional gate allocation method. Dynamic planning provides more robust gate assignment and delay management at the airports especially in the peak hours.