Breakout local search for the multi-objective gate allocation problem

•We optimize a linear combination of nine gate allocation objectives•Expected traffic at taxiways around the gates is also taken into account.•Two heuristic algorithms are presented to tackle the problems.•Test instances are based on information provided by Manchester Airport.

The problem of assigning gates to arriving and departing flights is one of the most important problems in airport operations. We take into account the real multi-criteria nature of the problem by optimizing a total of nine gate allocation objectives that are oriented both on convenience for airport/airline services and passenger comfort. As far as we are aware, this is the largest number of objectives jointly optimized in the GAP literature. Given the complexity of the considered problem, we propose a heuristic approach based on the Breakout Local Search (BLS) framework. BLS is a recent variant of the Iterated Local Search (ILS) with a particular focus on the perturbation strategy. Based on some relevant information on search history, it tries to introduce an appropriate degree of diversification by determining adaptively the number and type of moves for the next perturbation phase. Moreover, we use a new memory-based greedy constructive heuristic to generate a starting point for BLS. Benchmark instances used for our experiments and comparisons are based on information provided by Manchester Airport.