Design, implementation, and application of a tool for optimal aircraft positioning

Abstract

Optimal positioning of aircraft at a specific airport is a very difficult problem involving the modeling of many constraints. Lufthansa AG formulated this problem field for the airport Frankfurt/Main. In this contribution we describe the development of a tool for finding solutions to positioning problems automatically. Our approach consists of two parts. A generic airport model is developed where the notion of logical fiberings plays a basic role. The optimization task is treated by application of modified and extended genetic algorithms. A system has been implemented which is capable of computing concrete positioning plans that can be used by a human operator for further processing. This leads to a considerable speed up in the generation of positioning plans for aircraft in comparison with the former method. The application of the aircraft positioning tool to a real world scenario (airport Frankfurt) is briey presented.