Quantitative evaluation of passenger terminal orientation

When passenger terminal layout is being decided, one of the important aspects to consider is how the passenger orients himself during his visit to the terminal and his movements through it, i.e. terminal orientation. Among other things, this terminal characteristic results from visibility, or the visual connectivity between elements and spaces. The paper proposes an amendment and modification to the known method for the quantitative evaluation of terminal orientation which uses an oriented network to describe the connectivity of elements (terminal orientation). The amendment and modification of the method consists of proposing that during evaluation only visual connections that have functional meaning should be considered, rather than all visual connections. A further modification is the introduction of different weights for different connections. The example presented in the paper considers an airport terminal building.     

Assigning fighter plane formations to enemy aircraft using fuzzy logic

Fighter aircraft protect specific facilities on alert in the air by patrolling expectation zones. These zones are located in the direction from which enemy aircraft attacks are expected; fighter formations are sent from them to intercept enemy aircraft. The problem considered in this paper is to determine the optimum assignment of fighter plane formations to enemy formations. The proposed solution is based on fuzzy logic and integer linear programming. A numerical example is given to illustrate the application possibilities of the proposed solution.     

Optimization of refuelling truck fleets at an airport

This paper considers the process of aircraft refuelling using refuelling trucks at an airport. The problem which arises is to determine the minimum number of refuelling trucks and their routes for the given demand (schedule and fuel quantities). The constraint is that there is no aircraft departure delay due to the refuelling process. The optimum solution is found here using the branch-and-bound technique. This solution is compared with results obtained on the basis of random assignment and a few conclusions are made. The paper also presents a model application example based on real life data from a medium-sized airport.     

Heuristic approach to the airline schedule disturbances problem

Abstract

When disturbances make it impossible to realise the planned flight schedule, the dispatcher at the airline operational centre defines a new flight schedule based on airline policy, in order to reduce the negative effects of these perturbations. Depending on airline policy, when designing the new flight schedule, the dispatcher delays or cancels some flights and reassigns some flights to available aircraft. In this paper, a decision support system (DSS) for solving the airline schedule disturbances problem is developed aiming to assist decision makers in handling disturbances in real-time. The system is based on a heuristic algorithm, which generates a list of different feasible schedules ordered according to the value of an objective function. The dispatcher can thus select and implement one of them. In this paper, the possibilities of DSS are illustrated by real numerical examples that concern JAT Airways' flight schedule disturbances.