Extended Aircraft Arrival Management Under Uncertainty: A Computational Study

摘要

The arrival manager operational horizon, in Europe, is foreseen to be extended up to 500 n miles around destinationairports. In this context, arrivals need to be sequenced and scheduled a few hours before landing, when uncertainty isstill significant. A computational study, based on a two-stage stochastic program, is presented and discussed toaddress the arrival sequencing and scheduling problem under uncertainty. This preliminary study focuses on a singleinitial approach fix and a single runway. Different problem characteristics, optimization parameters, as well as fastsolution methods for real-time implementation are analyzed in order to evaluate the viability of our approach. ParisCharles-De-Gaulle airport is taken as a case study. A simulation-based validation experiment shows that the currentapproach can decrease the number of expected conflicts near the terminal area by up to 70%. Moreover, in ahigh-density traffic situation, the total time to lose inside the terminal area can be decreased by more than 71%,whereas the expected landing rate can be increased by 7.7% as compared to the first-come/first-served policy. Thiscomputational study demonstrates that sequencing and scheduling arrivals under uncertainty a few hours beforelanding can successfully diminish the need for holding stacks by relying more on upstream linear holding.