Runway schedule determination by simulation optimization

Many airport runway expansion projects are restricted by space limitations imposed by development in the vicinity of the airport. This often causes planners to choose configurations for new runways that limit the use of these runways in time and/or space. Studies that model airports with new runways that are not yet operational need to develop plausible operational models for these new runways since historical data is not available. We look at a runway schedule problem encountered during the configuration and validation step of an earlier study. We develop a method using simulation optimization to approach the runway schedule problem and compare it to a manual approach developed in the earlier study. We use the total airspace and airport modeler to model the airport and airspace operations and fast simulated annealing for the optimization.