Robust gate assignment procedures from an airport management perspective

•We model the main perturbations that impact in the gate assignment strategies.•Robustness of different airport gate assignment policies has been analyzed..•A formal modeling approach based on colored Petri nets has been used.•Infrastructure investments can be reduced by a better predictability.•The advantages of using causal models for airport management purposes are reported.

The assignment of aircraft arriving out of schedule to available stands at the terminal is a major issue with feasible solutions when stands are placed in the same zone, but it is very difficult to solve when candidate alternative stands are placed in different zones due to passenger movement through the terminal. In order to tackle arrival delays while preserving quality factor services to passengers and protecting turnaround aircraft times, most airports have modified their infrastructure by increasing the number of stands at the terminal. In this paper a simulation-based experimental approach that evaluates the minimum amount of stands at the terminal necessary to cope with arrival/departure pattern traffic under a time delay limit is presented. Emergent dynamics are analyzed when the number of stands is increased and a causal model to evaluate shortages and benefits of different policies and strategies for gate assignment to mitigate undesirable consequences is introduced.