Sliding window algorithm for aircraft landing problem

The problem of deciding how to land aircraft approaching an airport involves assigning each aircraft to an appropriate runway, computing a landing sequence for each runway and scheduling the landing time for each aircraft. Runway allocation, sequencing and scheduling for each aircraft must ensure the scheduled landing time lies within a predefined time window and meet separation time requirements with other aircraft. The objective is to achieve effective runway use. In this paper, a novel algorithm which we call sliding window algorithm, adapted from receding horizon control, is applied to solve this problem. Computational results are presented for publicly available test problem involving up to 500 aircraft and five runways and compared with those obtained by other algorithms presented in the previous literature. Comparative study shows that our sliding window algorithm outperforms the compared algorithms whether in terms of execution times or solution quality.