The runway system is more likely to be a bottleneck area for airport operations because it serves as a link between the air routes and airport ground traffic. As a key problem of air traffic flow management, the aircraft runway scheduling problem (ARSP) is of great significance to improve the utilization of runways and reduce aircraft delays. This paper proposes a large neighborhood search algorithm combined with simulated annealing and the receding horizon control strategy (RHC-SALNS) which is used to solve the ARSP. In the framework of simulated annealing, the large neighborhood search process is embedded, including the breaking, reorganization and local search processes. The large neighborhood search process could expand the range of the neighborhood building in the solution space. A receding horizon control strategy is used to divide the original problem into several subproblems to further improve the solving efficiency. The proposed RHC-SALNS algorithm solves the ARSP instances taken from the actual operation data of Wuhan Tianhe Airport. The key parameters of the algorithm were determined by parametric sensitivity analysis. Moreover, the proposed RHC-SALNS is compared with existing algorithms with excellent performance in solving large-scale ARSP, showing that the proposed model and algorithm are correct and efficient. The algorithm achieves better optimization results in solving large-scale problems.

In view of the common U-shaped apron structure of large- and medium-sized airports at home and abroad, this study considered the optimization design and performance evaluation of the U-shaped apron operation procedure. First, by analyzing the physical structure characteristics and traffic operation characteristics of the U-shaped area, exclusive, partition-shared, and global-shared operation procedures of the U-shaped area were designed, and differentiated apron-operation rules and traffic models were constructed for different types of operation procedures. Then, from the perspectives of safety, efficiency, and environmental protection, a multi-dimensional evaluation index system of U-shaped area operation performance is established, and a classification measurement and comprehensive evaluation method based on critique is proposed. Finally, a traffic simulation model was established based on airport network topology modeling. We used Monte Carlo methods for the simulation in Python 3.6, and the experimental results show that, in the scenario of high-density traffic operation, compared with exclusive and partition-shared procedures, the implementation effect of the global shared procedure is very significant, and the apron operation capacity increased by 14.8% and 5.0%, respectively. The probability of aircraft conflict decreased by 32.2% and 11.8%, respectively, and the time of single conflict relief decreased by 16.1 s and 10.6 s, respectively. The average resource utilization in each U-shaped area increased by 66% and 25%, respectively, while the average daily carbon emissions of a single aircraft were reduced by 16.7 kg and 11.0 kg and the average daily fuel consumption of a single aircraft were reduced by 3.6 kg and 2.4 kg, respectively. The proposed method is scientific and effective and can provide theoretical and methodological support for optimizing the configuration of the scene operation mode of complex airports and for improving flight operation efficiency.