Masters Abstracts (1991)

SU, YANN-YEAN
(December 1991December 1991), Associate Professor, Wen-Tzao Junior College, Taiwan

Email: yysu@mail.wtuc.edu.tw

An Expert System Approach to Aircraft-Gate Assignment

The assignment of aircraft to gates plays an important role in airline station operations. Effective aircraft-gate assignment is a factor that influences efficient airline operation. Poor aircraft-gate assignment will result in aircraft delay, passenger inconvenience, and poor airline productivity. The factors that affect aircraft-gate assignment are complex in nature. The use of expert system methodology to help solve this problem is a new approach to this complex issue.

The characteristics of expert systems offer some advantages over more traditional approaches in the solution of the aircraft-gate assignment problem. Expert systems can provide a user with an avenue to deal with domain uncertainty. The prototype expert system based aircraft-gate assignment model that has been developed is a practical system for efficient handling of the day-to-day aircraft-gate assignment. The aircraft-gate assignment expert system helps identify the resources needed at gates to service aircraft efficiently. The prototype aircraft-gate assignment expert system developed in this research works as a planning tool. It assists in strategic planning of schedules and assists with projected aircraft-gate assignments. The system can be enhanced to deal with dynamic, real time changes to aircraft schedules due to weather, aircraft maintenance, additional flights, etc. Eventually, it is expected that the system proposed will grow and become a dynamic tool for aircraft-gate assignment.