A Study on Optimal Runway Assignment Using Simulated Annealing

Runway use has strong impact on the operational efficiency especially in the congested airport with multiple runway configuration. The Tokyo International Airport, which is the most congested airport in Japan, has four runways. Air traffic controllers assign either of two runways to aircraft departing from and arriving at the airport. Take-off and landing times influence each other where departure and arrival aircraft use the same runway. Also, some time intervals are necessary when aircraft departing behind a landing aircraft on a crossing runway. Hence, considering both departure and arrival aircraft is indispensable to obtain the optimal runway assignment in terms of efficiency. In this study, we examined optimal arrival runway assignment that minimized the sum of departure and arrival queuing times. The computation revealed that air traffic controllers reduced queuing time compared to the nominal runway assignment determined on the basis of approaching directions. Furthermore, the optimal runway assignment can reduce more queuing time.