Priority Rules for Runway Use

An airport runway is regarded as the service facility in a queuing mechanism, used by both landing and departing aircraft. The usual order of service gives priority to landings over departures; here service disciplines are considered assigning priorities to different classes of aircraft grouped according to required runway time. Several such priority rules are compared numerically by means of a steady-state queuing model with non-preemptive priorities. The effect of such rules on average waiting time is found to be small, but average delay cost can be reduced appreciably.