The recoverable robust stand allocation problem: a GRU airport case study

This paper presents an innovative approach to the tactical planning of aircraft remote and contact-stands allocation at airports. We use the concept of recoverable robustness to obtain a recoverable robust solution to the stand allocation problem, a solution that can be recovered by limited means for the included scenarios. Four objective functions are discussed and tested to assess the efficiency of a stand allocation plan. Namely, the minimization of passengers' walking distance, the minimization of tows, the maximization of the number of passengers allocated to contact-stands, and the maximization of the potential airport commercial revenue. The inclusion of an airport commercial revenue metric in the stand allocation optimization model and the comparison of its performance to the pre-mentioned other objectives is another novelty of this work. The research was developed in collaboration with the Guarulhos International Airport of Sao Paulo for which the recoverable robust approach was tested for 6 days of operations at the airport. We demonstrate that the solutions obtained with the proposed approach outperform the solutions of a traditional robust approach. In addition, a discussion of the trade-off between the different objectives is provided.