Aircraft Stand Assignment to Minimize Walking

Modern airport terminal building designs that have finger piers and airbridges sometimes result in significant walking distances for passengers. For a given set of aircraft parking positions next to a passenger terminal building and a given set of aircraft (with associated numbers of arriving and departing passengers), a method to find aircraft stand assignment which minimizes average passenger walking distances is proposed. The method is based on a branchand‐bound technique (backtracking version), slightly modified to accelerate computation. This type of optimization is to be applied only if the number of passengers varies enough between the aircraft in question. The optimum solution mainly affected the number of passengers who walk maximum distances (decreased this number) and minimum distances (increased this number), compared to random aircraft stand assignment.