Solving push-out conflicts in apron taxiways of airports by a network-based simulation

At busy airports, push-out conflicts occur simultaneously in apron taxiways and affect gate assignment operations in apron control. In current manual operations, it is not easy for apron controllers to consider and solve such conflicts in an exact and efficient manner, due to the uncertainties involved in the operations, the difficulties in efficiently controlling and solving push-out conflicts, and also the fact that too many more important factors should be considered in these real-time operations. At most airports today, a buffer time between the use of gates is introduced in gate assignment operations to reduce the impact of push-out conflicts to the delay of aircraft getting into, or leaving from, a gate. From the standpoint of gate assignment operations in apron control, this study analyzes aircraft ground movements and conflicts in apron taxiways. For coping with increasing air traffic demand and minimizing delays caused by inefficient scheduling of aircraft ground movements, and their effect on the gate assignment operations, a network-based model is proposed to perform simulation to support the analysis of the effect of aircraft ground movements in apron taxiways to gate assignment operations. By the proposed method, the delay characteristics of aircraft ground movements in apron taxiways and the activities on gates can be analyzed and studied in detail. Furthermore, the results of the simulation are applied to solve push-out conflicts and minimize delays to aircraft on gates in apron control. Computational results of experiments are also presented and discussed.