An Optimization of Arrival and Departure Aircraft Scheduling in Multi-Airport Terminal Areas Considering Complex Air Traffic Control Decisions

From a tactical flow management perspective, this study focuses on optimizing the temporal and spatial distribution of flight traffic at the microscopic operational level within multi-airport terminal areas, to enable dynamic management of arrival and departure flows and achieve orderly and efficient operations. This paper analyzes the unique airspace structure of multi-airport terminal areas and constructs a spatiotemporal node-link graph to represent arrival and departure operations. Then, based on actual air traffic control requirements, it incorporates multiple decision factors, including route selection, waypoint sequencing, speed adjustments, holding procedures, and dynamic time-domain separation, at critical resource nodes such as entry points, terminal airspace, approach airspace, and runways. Meanwhile, two mixed-integer linear programming scheduling models are proposed: one based on nominal paths and another incorporating multiple route options. The objective is to minimize cumulative scheduling deviations for all flights while also reducing air holding times for arriving aircraft. Finally, this study uses the Chengdu terminal area as a case study and conducts simulation verification under three typical operational scenarios: normal operations, departure peak operations, and arrival peak operations. The simulation result demonstrates that both proposed models are capable of generating conflict-free flight schedules. In both normal operation and departure peak scenarios, the two models exhibit similar performance, reducing the average scheduling deviation per aircraft by up to approximately 15.8 s compared to other scheduling models. In the arrival peak scenario, the model incorporating multiple paths shows superior performance, reducing the average air holding time per arriving aircraft by up to 42.3 s compared to other models.