Optimal aircraft scheduling and flight trajectory in terminal control areas

This paper deals with the Terminal Control Area Aircraft Scheduling Problem and the Aircraft Trajectory Optimization Problem for landing operations in a busy terminal control area. The first problem requires to compute a conflict-free schedule for all aircraft minimizing the overall aircraft delays, while the second deals with the computation of a landing trajectory for each aircraft which minimizes either the travel time or the fuel consumption. Due to the lack of integrated solving approaches considering both problems, we propose a framework for the lexicographic optimization of the two problems. The computational experiments, performed on Milano Malpensa airport instances, show the existence of performance gaps between the optimized indicators of the two problems when different lexicographic optimization approaches are considered.