Intelligent Decision Support for Aircraft Logistics at Commercial Airports

For airline traffic at major commercial airports, systems of staged queues are employed to coordinate flight and ground operations of independent carriers with some competing and some collective interests. System performance is affected by the concentration of airlines´ flight schedules, resources allocated for gate operations, taxiway and ramp layouts, air traffic control procedures for aircraft on the ground and in the air, adverse weather conditions, traffic backups at major connecting hubs, etc. We present a conceptual framework and discrete-event simulation model for examining how changes in airport design, ground resources, operating procedures and sequencing techniques for traffic movements affect different stakeholders.