A metaheuristic approach to solve the flight gate assignment problem

In the past decades, the increase of civil air-traffic and the corresponding growth of airports have highlightedthe importanceof the gate scheduling as a key activity in airport operations.Tosolvethis problem, different mathematical models for flights assignment to gates can often be found in technical literature.In this work we propose a method based on the Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) to find an optimal flight gate assignmentfor a givenschedule.This metaheuristicrepresents an interesting methodology in the field of Swarm Intelligence forits capability to solve high level combinatorial problems with fast convergence performances.The proposed methodology includes a multicriteria analysis considering two main objectives: minimization ofpassenger total walking distanceandremote gate usage.Results of the comparison with the Milano-Malpensaairportschedule highlight the effectiveness of the proposed method