Airport gate assignment that minimizes passenger flow in terminals and aircraft congestion on ramps

Researchers have dedicated substantial effort to accommodating the increasing needs of air transportation as well as environmental concerns. Among these efforts, we focus on airport gates, which are limited resources in the National Airspace System. In spite of the importance of this issue, traditional research has not devoted much attention to aircraft congestion on ramps. In this paper, we propose a new perspective of the gate assignment problem that puts importance on aircraft congestion as well as passenger ow, which is a main objective of the traditional gate assignment problem. We implement a meta-heuristic algorithm that minimizes passenger ow and aircraft congestion. This research will help to balance passenger needs in terminal and also on board airplanes. Copyright © 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.