Optimizing Winter Maintenance Service at Airports

Preserving the efficiency of an airport during winter operations and corresponding conditions requires proper configuration of the snow removal fleet and its smart operation by using optimal routing schemes to clean the airport’s airside. In this paper, we present a two-stage approach for optimizing typical winter operations at large airports. In the first stage, we estimate the minimum fleet size to undertake maintenance operations in due time based on a vehicle capacity model. We consider various vehicle parameters, dedicated airport maps with allocated service areas and potential service level agreements between airport operator and airlines acting as customers. In the second stage, the optimal routing of the vehicles is determined under the objective of minimizing the cleaning time of pre-defined areas. We apply a specially adapted variant of Vehicle Routing Problem with problem-specific constraints such as vehicle synchronization for joint snow removal, restrictions resulting from the wind direction and, furthermore the preference of runways over taxiways. With the help of the developed methodology it is possible to verify potential investments into fleet resources, which might seem to be necessary to meet increasing service level requirements. The methodology is being demonstrated for Leipzig-Halle Airport (LEJ).