Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina X:X | DOI: 10.26552/com.C.2026.041

Optimization of Passenger Flow on the Airport Apron

David Mičulka ORCID...1, *, Dušan Teichmann ORCID...1, Marek Kvet ORCID...2
1 VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
2 University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovakia *E-mail of corresponding author:

In this article is addressed the optimization problem of assigning aircraft to parking stands on the apron of international regional airports. The goal was to position an aircraft on the airport apron in a way that complies with operational, capacity, and safety constraints while optimizing the value of the selected optimization criterion. In contrast to other commonly published approaches, problem considered here focuses on minimizing passenger transport between the parking stands and the terminal via airport buses. To solve this problem, a linear integer programming model is formulated and solved using the Xpress-IVE optimization software. The model’s functionality is tested using real operational data from Ostrava International Regional Airport.

Keywords: airport apron; aircraft stand assignment; passenger flow optimization; integer linear programming
Grants and funding:

This work was supported by the research grant VEGA 1/0220/25 “Regional equality in access to public rescue services provided from service centers on the transport network” and grant SP2025/065 Research, Development, and Innovation in Transportation and Logistics 2025.

Conflicts of interest:

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Received: May 5, 2026; Accepted: June 16, 2026; Prepublished online: July 9, 2026 

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