Simulating the impact of gate operation disruptions and mitigation strategies on gate delay

Abstract

When an arriving flight cannot pull into its gate, this is called gate delay. This paper presents a simulation model to evaluate the impact of gate operation disruptions and gate-delay mitigation strategies. Operation disruptions investigated include arrival delays, longer gate blocking times, and unavailable gates. Mitigation strategies investigated include adding new gates, implementing common gates, using overnight off-gate parking and adopting self-docking gates. Simulation results show the following effects of disruptions: (i) The impact of arrival delay in a time window is bounded, (ii) The impact of longer gate-blocking times increases linearly in the size of the disruption, (iii) Reduced gate availability has a small impact when a small number of gates are affected, due to slack gate capacity, but when the slack gate capacity is used up, gate delay increases non-linearly. Simulation results show the following effects of mitigation strategies: (i) implementing common gates is an effective mitigation strategy, especially for airports that are not dominated by a single carrier, such as LGA. (ii) The overnight off-gate rule is effective in mitigating gate delay due to stranded overnight aircraft due to departure cancellations, especially at airports where gate usage is at peak at night, such as LGA and DFW. It can also be very effective to mitigate gate delay due to operation disruption in evenings. (iii) Self-docking gates are effective in mitigating gate delay due to reduced gate availability.