A robust optimisation approach to the aircraft sequencing and scheduling problem with runway configuration planning

Unanticipated delays cause significant reduction of airport capacity management, decrease in customer satisfaction, and poor on-time performance. Safety in runway configuration planning is a top priority in aviation management, and air traffic control adopts the risk analysis in handing flight schedules under uncertainty. The degree of conservatism in handling airborne delays and airport traffic should be increased, as any accident due to improper runway usage causes dramatic loss, delay propagation and disruption to the airport management and subsequence activities. In this paper, the robust aircraft sequencing and scheduling problem with runway configuration planning using the min-max regret approach is proposed. The adoption of the mid-point scenario heuristic as an initial solution is able to reduce the computational burden in the computational experiment compared to the solution by using lower bound scenario by solving instances of moderate size (10-30 flights) in a two-runways system.