A branch-and-price algorithm for the airport gate assignment problem considering the trade-off between robustness and efficiency

Abstract

In this paper, a novel objective for the airport gate assignment problem which considers the trade-off between robustness and operational efficiency in a unified dimension is developed. A task-based two-phase model is established, where the branch-and-price framework is embedded in the first stage. A set partitioning model is developed, where a series of aircrafts assigned to the same gate of a certain type are defined as a gate plan. The pricing subproblem is also decomposed into three parallel subproblems according to the gate size to account for the heterogeneity of the gates. Each gate plan is allocated to a physical gate in order to minimize the utilization of remote gates in the second stage. The pulse algorithm with two acceleration strategies, that generates a lower bound matrix in reverse order and applies path combination, is used to solve the pricing subproblems. Finally, extensive computational experiments are conducted to demonstrate the high performance of the proposed model, especially for large-scale instances.