Soft Computing (2023) 27:7939–7955

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-023-07987-3 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().
,- volV)

OPTIMIZATION

Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization

algorithms
Mohd Khaled Shambour1 • Muhannad A Abu-Hashem2

Accepted: 16 February 2023 / Published online: 22 March 2023

 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023

Abstract
The primary objective of airport management worldwide is always to make it easier to provide transportation services and
minimize latency. This could be accomplished by controlling the movement of travelers through the airport’s different
checkpoints for passports, baggage handling, customs, and both departure and arrival lobbies. As one of the
biggest passenger terminals around the world and among the most attractive destinations for visitors during the Hajj
pilgrimage, this paper concentrates on enhancing the movement of travelers in the King Abdulaziz International Airport’s
pilgrimage station in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Several optimization methods are used to better schedule the phases
within the airport terminals as well as the assignment of arriving flights to vacant airport portals. These include the
differential evolution algorithm (DEA), harmony search algorithm, genetic algorithm (GA), flower pollination algorithm
(FPA), and black widow optimization algorithm. The findings demonstrated the potential sites for the development of
airport stages, which may assist decision-makers in improving operational efficiency in the future. The simulation results
showed that GA was more efficient in most of the experiments than the alternative algorithms for small population sizes in
terms of the quality of the solutions obtained and the convergence rates. In contrast, DEA performed better in the larger
population sizes. The outcomes also showed that FPA performed better than its rivals in identifying the optimal solution in
terms of the overall duration of passenger waiting time.

Keywords Flight scheduling  King Abdulaziz International Airport  Optimization methods

1 Introduction Before the outbreak of Covid-19, specifically between

The creation of management systems for passenger ser-
vices at airport terminals is one of the key challenges
facing airport organizations (Gronfula 2014; Correia et al.
2008). This enhances passenger activity, motion, and
mobility between one phase and the next, as well as their
pleasure with the process and their overall experience. It
also improves security and protection (Gronfula 2014).
& Mohd Khaled Shambour
myshambour@uqu.edu.sa
Muhannad A Abu-Hashem
mabohasm@kau.edu.sa
1
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Institute for Hajj
and Umrah Research, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah,
Saudi Arabia
2
Department of Geomatics, Faculty of Architecture and
planning, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
the years 2017 and 2019, more than 1.5 million people
entered Saudi Arabia through airports to perform Hajj, one
of the main Islamic pillars. King Abdulaziz International
Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah and Prince Muhammad Bin
Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah are the main
airports that receive pilgrims from outside the KSA.
The Hajj terminal at KAIA is one of the fourth-largest
passenger terminals in the world (GACA 2023). It serves as
the main entry point for pilgrims coming to perform Hajj
and Umrah rituals. The Hajj terminal has four additional
entrances on the ground floor for travelers approaching by
bus since their airplanes are parked in a distant region, in
addition to ten gates on the first floor for passengers uti-
lizing airline bridges (Gronfula 2014).
Idris (2019) and Ghamdi (2023) claim that the Hajj ter-
minal can hold 80 thousand of outgoing passengers in
about 36 h and 50 thousand entering passengers in
about 18 h. Additionally, the general authority of statistics

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7940
(GAS 2023) officially announced that the halls in Hajj ter-
minals could accommodate 3.5 and 3.8 thousand passen-
gers hourly for departures and arrivals, respectively. In
addition, Saudi Vision 2030 plans to double the number of
Umrah pilgrims from 8 to 30 million by the same year (SAV
2016).
This paper introduces an intelligent airline scheduling
scheme that can increase passenger flow at the Hajj terminal
by making effective use of the current resources. Five opti-
mization algorithms have been developed and adapted to
improve the flow process of passengers through different
airport phases, namely the differential evolution algorithm
(DEA), the harmony search algorithm (HSA), genetic algo-
rithm (GA), flower pollination algorithm (FPA), and black
widow optimization algorithm (BWOA). Ten hard and soft
constraints were introduced in the study, and the assumptions
were that all airport gates could handle any size aircraft and
that waiting periods always included roaming time.
The metrics utilized to evaluate the developed algo-
rithms are fitness value, convergence rate, and passenger
waiting time. The study also revealed potential delays for
travelers at KAIA stages that management would need to
address in the future to improve airport operations’ effi-
ciency and, ultimately, increase travelers’ satisfaction. The
structure of this paper is as follows. An overview of related
literature is presented in Sect. 2. The formulation and
description of the problem are introduced and discussed in
Sect. 3. Research methodology and experimental results
are provided in Sects. 4 and 5, respectively. Finally, Sect. 6
provides the article’s conclusion and future work.
2 Related work
Several research endeavors have been conducted in recent
decades on different aspects of applications and challenges
in large-scale Islamic religious gatherings. Some recent
research can be found in the literature including those by
Ahmad et al. (2018); Alshammari et al. (2021); Felemban
et al. (2020, 2022); Sindia et al. (2022); Shambour (2021).
Airports designed to accommodate large numbers of
Muslims are among the most critical stations through
which Muslims pass to perform their religious activities.
One of the most important stages in managing airport
operations is allocating aircraft to airport gates since mistakes
in this process could cause delays or aircraft accidents. The
allocation strategy is among the most serious challenges that
airport management teams confront on a regular basis. The
problem of locating parking spaces for incoming aircraft at
airport gates has been researched by numerous academics
(Ding et al. 2004; Al-Sultan et al. 2009).
Xu and Bailey (2001) employed a Tabu Search (TS)
algorithm in an attempt to minimize the distances that
123
M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem
travelers have to walk for connecting flights. The authors
employed a two-stage technique to resolve the issue. Greedy
method was employed in the early phase to keep the number
of unforeseen flights at the lowest. Ding et al. (2004) and Al-
Sultan et al. (2009) studied the reduction in the number of
unannounced flights at the gateways as well as the reduction
of the total travel lengths inside the airport. The authors used
a similar approach to Xu and Bailey’s (2001) study, which
used the Greedy algorithm to come up with a workable
solution. A further improvement in the current approach was
explored using the ‘‘Interval Exchange Move’’ function from
the TS optimizer, which offers space in looking for suit-
able solutions, particularly if the flight schedules are crow-
ded. Additionally, Alanli (2019) proposed a branch-and-
bound method and employed it to GAP to address its chal-
lenges. The authors take into account an airport GAP that
allocates a number of airplanes to several gateways to reduce
the overall route that all travelers must walk. Planes are
diverted to an apron if they are unable to be allocated to a
gateway because of overlaps. In addition, in a more realistic
setting where airport gate processing time is controllable,
Khatibi et al. (2019) suggested a bi-objective framework to
lower the overall impact of task processing time expansion,
unavailability, earliness, latency, and compression. The
project also seeks to reduce the number of passengers
crowded onto gates. A mixed-integer programming
approach is suggested. Two multi-objective meta-heuristic
methods, hybrid NSGA-II (non-dominated sorting genetic
algorithm II) and VNS (variable neighborhood search) and
NSGA-II, are used to solve the challenge.
Furthermore, Al-Sultan (2012) developed a simulation
approach to determine the appropriate number of gateways
needed for airplanes that are not assigned to a particular gate-
way. The suggested approach also makes predictions about
flight arrival rates before running simulations to plan flights for
a week. Hu and Paolo (2009) employed GA in their study to find
a solution to the issue of placing airplanes at airport gateways.
The relative locations were employed to represent the chro-
mosomes rather than the exact position of aircraft on gateways.
Furthermore, Zhang et al. (2022) put out a strong multi-ob-
jective gateway allocation modeling approach to address GAP
with the goals of reducing real-time flight complications,
increasing the boarding bridge rate, and reducing airplane
waiting to board fuel usage. The airport GAP is addressed using
an enhanced tunicate swarm algorithm (CG-TSA) relying on
cosine mutation and adaptive clustering.
Hidayatno et al. (2015) used the Simulated Annealing
(SA) method to reduce the number of aircraft not assigned
to gateways at Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta International
Airport and to determine the appropriate assignment of
aircraft to gates. To solve the challenge of connecting
airplanes to gates, Cheng and Ho (2012) combined the TS
technique with path relinking. To evaluate the suggested
Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7941

technique, the authors analyzed information from actual The phases of the Hajj terminal at KAIA are described in
flights departing from Incheon International Airport (ICN). depth in the subsequent sections, along with the problem’s
In addition, GAP tries to distribute gates to planes while features and mathematical formulation.
taking airport operational effectiveness and traveler plea-
sure into account. Cai et al. (2019) proposed CBR-GAM to 3.1 Stages of the KAIA Hajj terminal
solve the difficulties of traveler walking distance and high
gateway allocation costs. The two objectives that need to Five main stages that arriving travelers must go through at
be maximized, while meeting the restrictions on the con- the Hajj terminal. The four indoor stages of the arrival
strained number of planes allocated to the apron, are the terminal include gate lounges, passport checkpoints, han-
overall walking path of travelers and the overall robust cost dling luggage, and customs checkpoints. The fifth stage is
of the gateway allocation. located in an open area called the Plaza. The stages are
Moreover, Ng et al. (2022) examine the issue of deci- explained in more detail below.
sion-making in the terminal moving region during the
Stage 1. Gate lounges
irregular arrival timings at airplane arrival points and looks
at the model’s specified settings for air traffic controllers. Passengers arriving by plane enter the terminal through
The suggested framework establishes a deterministic gate lounges. According to KAIA (2023) and GACA
timetable and adjusts the cruise speed while taking into (2023), there is a sum of 18 lounge gates spread across two
account increased longitudinal separation, performance floors. For travelers coming through the jetways, there are
degradation from a deterministic timetable, and approach- 12 lounge gates on the first floor, and for those reaching by
ing and arriving times on landings. bus, there are 6 more lounges on the ground floor. At this
In another study, Drexl and Nikulin (2008) used the SA point, pilgrims undergo a medical examination, and if
technique to maximize the use of all airport gateways while necessary, immunizations are given (Alrabghi 2019).
reducing overall walking distances or inter-flight connec- Table 1 displays the estimated characteristics of the arrival
tivity times. To restrict the number of airplanes that are not lounges (Shambour and Khan 2022).
allocated to gateways and to announce the gate timetable as
early as feasible, Lim and Wang (2005) switched stochastic
programming to binary programming. The scheduling
Table 1 Estimated characteristics of the arrival lounges
procedure was carried out by Ghazouani et al. (2015) using
the GA, whereas the gene coding procedure was carried out Lounge ID Space (m2) Capacity (passenger seats) Area zone
using integers. Every gene’s index contains the flight First floor
number, and its value corresponds to the gate number that L1 800 533 AZ1
the flight will then be assigned to. Aktel et al. (2017) used L2 500 333 AZ1
TS and SA to resolve the airport gate mapping challenge in L3 500 333 AZ1
order to compare the effectiveness of both methods. Their
L4 500 333 AZ1
efforts aimed to cut down on the number of unassigned
L5 500 333 AZ1
flights and overall passenger travel distances. The out-
L6 600 400 AZ1
comes reported that, for small-size issues, the suggested TS
L7 600 400 AZ2
technique performed better than the SA method on average.
L8 500 333 AZ2
This study was motivated by the need to increase KAIA
L9 500 333 AZ2
airport capacity in light of the growing number of pilgrims,
L10 500 333 AZ2
which is one of Saudi Vision 2030’s main objectives. To
L11 500 333 AZ2
ensure the highest level of passenger satisfaction, it is
L12 800 533 AZ2
crucial to assign arriving planes to available gates and
Ground floor
manage subsequent airport stages utilizing optimization
techniques in the most efficient and practical way possible. L13 800 533 AZ1
L14 500 333 AZ1
L15 500 333 AZ1
3 Formulation and description L16 500 333 AZ2
of the problem L17 500 333 AZ2
L18 800 533 AZ2
The main step in creating operational procedures for airport Total 10,400 6928
passenger terminals is to optimize airport resource
scheduling while taking several constraints into account.

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7942 M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem

Table 2 Characteristics of the passport checkpoints Table 4 Characteristics of the customs areas
Counter section ID Number of counters Area zone Custom section ID X-ray devices Area

C1 18 AZ1 Cu1 4 AZ1

C2-a 32 AZ1 Cu2 4 AZ1
C2-b 16 AZ1 Cu3 4 AZ2
C3-a 32 AZ2 Cu4 4 AZ2
C3-b 16 AZ2 Total 16
C4 18 AZ2
Total 132

Table 5 Problem attributes

3.2 Passport checkpoints
Attributes Acronyms
At this point, staff at passport checkpoints verify the Flight F
information on the traveler’s documents and collect nec- Airport stage S
essary identifications (fingerprints and iris scans). There are Terminal gate G
six sections of 132 inspecting counters (Gronfula 2014;
Capacity of gate y
Alrabghi 2019). The features of the passport check-
Passport checkpoints P
points are shown in Table 2.
Luggage L
Stage 3. Handling luggage
Customs checkpoints C
During this stage, bags are gathered from two area zones, Plaza area Z
AZ1 and AZ2, each of which includes five conveyor belts Number of passengers n
(Ghamdi 2023; Alrabghi 2019). The primary characteris- Time T
tics of luggage halls are shown in Table 3. Minimum processing time minPT
Stage 4. Customs checkpoints Minimum number of workers minWR
Minimum number of counters at passport checkpoints minPC
Passengers are required to declare any jewels or currency
they are holding at this point, and luggage is x-rayed. Four Minimum devices required at customs checkpoints minCD
parts, each with four x-ray checking spots, a total of 16
checking points (Gronfula 2014; Alrabghi 2019). The key
characteristics of custom divisions are listed in Table 4.
Stage 5. The Plaza constraints is necessary to ensure the feasibility of the
solution, while the soft constraints are preferred to be
The Plaza is the exterior portion of the Hajj station and has satisfied to the greatest extent possible (Shambour et al.
a landmass of 140.000 square meters. It is wrapped in tent- 2013). Table 5 defines the problem qualities and their
shaped roofing (GACA 2023). It features a range of acronyms.
amenities, including bus stops, banks, stores, and restau- The constraints of the problem can be formally
rants. At this time, travelers get ready to board buses and expressed as follows (Shambour and Khan 2022).
start their ritual travel to Makkah. Assignment (A) is a function of resources (S, F):
C H 1 : There must be a gate assigned to each flight.
3.2.1 Formulation of the Problem
SG
ASFG ¼ AF i j 8j 2 G; 8i 2 F
The problem constraints are mathematically described in
this section, with five for the hard constraints (C H 15 ) and C H 2 : There is only one terminal gate designated for each
five for the soft constraints (C S15 ). Satisfying the hard flight at a time.
SG SG
AF i j 6¼ AFi k 8j; k 2 G; 8i 2 F
Table 3 Characteristics of the luggage halls
C H 3 : Each airport gate can only handle one flight at a
Luggage section ID Conveyor belts Area zone
time.
Lu1 5 AZ1 SGt1 SGt1
Lu2 5 AZ2 AF i1j 6¼ AFi2j 8t1 2 T; 8j 2 G; i1 6¼ i2; 8i1; i2 2 F
Total 10

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Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7943

C H 4 : All flights must be allocated to the gates that are S5 (Shambour and Khan 2022). The following formulation
appropriate to the number of passengers on that flight. represents the objective function of the optimization
problem:
SG !
F in  Gjy 8AF i j ; 8i 2 F; 8j 2 G X5  X
5

Min nvhn  1000 þ nvs1 þ nvs2  10 þ nvsm  100
C H 5 : Avoid any stage conflicts that might occur while n¼1 m¼3
transporting passengers.
St1 St1 where nvh and nvs denote the number of breaches of the
AFXi1m 6¼ AFXi2m
      created solution’s hard and soft constraints, respectively.
where
 X m 2 G1;2;:;18 or P1;2;::;6 or L1;2;::;10 or
C1;2;::;4 ; t1 2 T; i1 6¼ i2; 8i1; i2 2 F
C S1 . Reducing waiting times for passengers while 4 Proposed methodology
moving between stages.
4.1 Scheduling algorithm design
WT ðF i ; SX Þ ffi 0 8ASFXi ; 8i 2 F; where X 2 G or P or L or C
Building a successful method that optimizes the task
WTðSX ; F i Þis the waiting time of Flight i at stage X
scheduling for all airport stages requires a full under-
C S2 : Reduce processing time for medical examinations standing of all the components of the procedures that
and passport controls as much as possible. travelers go through, starting from the moment the plane
  lands until they depart the airport. As a result, the primary
PT SY Fi ffi minPT Y 8ASFYi ; 8i 2 F; where Y 2 G or P; scheduling process that must be assured is that flight pas-
PTðSY Fi Þ is the processing time of Flight i at stage Y sengers at a particular airport phase can only move to the
following phase after confirming that it has the ability to
C S3 : Reduce the number of employees conducting the receive them.
medical examinations as much as possible. The primary airport phases for the scheduling process
  are as follows:
WR SGj ffi minWR; 8j 2 G;
 
where WR SGj is the number of workers at Gate j
Phase 1 The process of transporting passengers from the aircraft to
C S4 : Reduce the number of passport counters as much as the waiting area at the gate and initiating medical
procedures
possible.
Phase 2 Transporting passengers from the gate hall to the passport
PC ðSPk Þ ffi minPC; 8k 2 P; where checkpoints area
PC ðSPk Þ Phase 3 Transporting passengers from the passport checkpoints to
the luggage handling area
is the number of passport counters at passport section k
Phase 4 Transporting passengers from the area that handles bags to
the customs checkpoints area
C S5 : Reduce the number of devices used at customs Phase 5 Transporting passengers from the customs checkpoints
checkpoints as much as possible. area to the Plaza area
CDðSCv Þ ffi minCD; 8v 2 C; where
CDðSCv Þ is the number ofcustoms
inspection devices at custom section v Algorithm 1 shows the essential steps employed in the
scheduling process, whereas Algorithms 2 to 6 provide
Each hard constraint has a violation cost value set to
further information for each of the above-mentioned pha-
1000, whereas soft constraints have three violation cost
ses.
values set to: 1 for S1, 10 for S2, and 100 for S3, S4, and

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Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7945

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4.2 Adapting optimization algorithms for airport
slot scheduling
Several variations in EAs have been adapted to tackle the
current scheduling problem, including DEA, HSA GA,
BWOA, and FPA methods. EAs maintain a set of solutions
throughout the evolution process to be able to contribute to
the development of one or more new solutions during each
iteration of the search process. This biological evolutionary
process is inspired by the natural world. Depending on the
production quality, the previous solutions are subject to
being replaced by new ones.
The proposed methods are applied to enhance the
scheduling procedures of the problem by discovering
parameter values that lead to the optimal solution cost in
terms of the objective function value. Table 6 lists the
problem parameters and their domain values.
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M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem
5 Experimental simulations and results
This section evaluates the effectiveness of five well-known
evolutionary algorithms in solving the scheduling problem:
DEA (Storn and Price 1997), HSA (Geem et al. 2001), GA
(Holland 1975), FPA (Yang et al. 2012), and BWOA
(Mirjalili et al. 2019). Fitness values and convergence rates
were employed as two performance metrics to evaluate
how effectively these algorithms performed.
5.1 Experimental design
The study makes the assumption that there were 61,788
travelers overall on the busiest day, traveling in 260 aircraft
at an average speed of 10.8 per hour (Shambour and Esam
2022). According to Gronfula (2014), the number of trav-
elers per trip is determined arbitrarily and varies from 100
to 500, with an average of 237.6 people per flight.
Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7947

Table 6 The problem

Parameter name Number of parameters Domain
parameters and their domain
values 1 Time required to complete the medical examination processes 1 [5,20]
2 Time required to complete passport control processes 1 [90,300]
3 Number of medical examination staff in each gate lounge 18 [1,50]
4 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 1 1 [22, 50]
5 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 2 1 [32, 50]
6 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 3 1 [16, 50]
7 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 4 1 [32, 50]
8 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 5 1 [16, 50]
9 Number of passport checkpoint counters in Sect. 6 1 [18, 50]
10 Number of inspection devices in each customs section 4 [4,10]

Table 7 Experimental settings

Settings GA HSA DEA FPA BWOA
for each algorithm
Pc Pm HMCR PAR Pc F P c Pp Pm

S1 0.5 0.3 0.5 0.3 0.5 0.3 0.5 0.1 0.5 0.3
S2 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.05 0.5 0.5
S3 0.7 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.7 0.1 0.7 0.3
S4 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.5 0.7 0.05 0.7 0.5
S5 0.9 0.3 0.9 0.3 0.9 0.3 0.9 0.1 0.9 0.3
S6 0.9 0.5 0.9 0.5 0.9 0.5 0.9 0.05 0.9 0.5

Furthermore, the amount of time needed to collect bags for
each flight is determined at random between the hours of 9
and 31.
All algorithms used a greedy algorithm to build the
initial solutions. The experimental parameters are listed in
Table 7, where Pc stands for crossover rate, Pm for
mutation rate, HMCR for harmony memory consideration
rate, PAR for pitch adjustment rate, F for scaling factor, Pp
for procreation rate, CR for cannibalism rating, P for
switch probability, and c for scaling factor.
Eighteen experimental tests with population sizes of 5, 20,
and 50 were carried out 20 times for each algorithm. In all
experiments, 1500 cost evaluations were the maximum
allowed. It should be noted that GA and BWOA apply more
cost assessments in each search iteration than other methods.
This is due to the fact that DEA, HSA, and FPA only provide
one solution per iteration, whereas GA and BWOA produce a
variety of solutions per iteration of the search, depending on
the size of the mating pool for GA and the procreate, can-
nibalism, and mutation operators for BWOA. The cannibal-
ism rating in BWOA is set to 0.2 in all experiments
performed. MATLAB 2020b was used to code the tests,
which were run on a Windows 10 64-bit computer with an
Intel 3.4 GHz processor and 32 GB of RAM.
5.2 Experimental results
The performance assessments of the investigated algo-
rithms are shown in this section based on the number of
population size values.
5.2.1 Simulation results for a population sample size of 5
Table 8 presents the statistical measures for the comparison
methods, including mean, standard deviation, best and
worst fitness values. The outcomes demonstrate that GA
and FPA outperform other algorithms. Where GA pro-
duced the best average score across all scenarios, except
for scenario S1, where FPA produced the best average
value of 26,951.4. The outcomes also demonstrated that
HSA performs comparably poorly to the others in all sce-
narios. The best convergence results for the comparison
algorithms in various parameter settings (i.e., S1, S2,…,
S6) are displayed in Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Additionally, a statistical analysis of variance technique,
ANOVA, is employed to determine whether or not there is
a statistically significant difference in the outcomes pro-
duced by the compared algorithms. The alternative
hypothesis (h1 ) contradicts the null hypothesis (h0 ),

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Table 8 Statistical fitness value

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6
results of 20 experimental trials
with a population size of 5 GA
Mean 27,573.1 29,125.5 27,499.7 29,163.1 27,432.9 28,885.5
Std 617.6 639.1 520.5 499.8 476.4 585.4
Best 26,546 27,572 26,816 28,504 26,457 27,750
Worst 28,577 30,091 28,674 30,401 28,272 30,019
HSA
Mean 40,723.5 40,521.1 39,802.0 40,140.7 40,412.9 39,733.4
Std 996.6 1125.7 1314.6 931.5 1950.8 1737.2
Best 38,885 39,453 37,680 38,405 34,673 35,460
Worst 42,864 44,237 43,359 42,143 43,024 42,651
DEA
Mean 36,425.2 32,821.2 38,312.9 35,731.0 41,027.4 39,071.6
Std 3600.7 3032.5 3154.3 3963.0 4930.9 3571.8
Best 30,864 27,810 31,073 29,667 31,237 33,885
Worst 46,037 41,582 43,850 45,753 51,736 48,264
BWOA
Mean 37,847.3 37,984.6 38,290.5 38,921.5 37,333.9 37,739.0
Std 2213.1 2008.3 2011.5 2713.2 1867.3 2521.3
Best 33,044 33,196 34,768 34,474 34,019 33,910
Worst 41,119 41,217 42,477 43,925 41,162 42,693
FPA
Mean 26,951.4 29,256.1 28,375.3 29,288.9 29,561.9 29,736.9
Std 1680.0 2374.4 2172.8 2524.1 2310.6 2500.9
Best 24,772 24,988 23,987 25,582 26,524 23,696
Worst 31,440 35,426 32,384 34,226 34,506 33,118
The best mean results are highlighted in bold font

Fig. 1 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S1 Fig. 2 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S2
parameter settings (population size = 5) parameter settings (population size = 5)

whereas the null hypothesis (h0 ) stated that there is no • h1 : At least one of the means is different.
correlation between the mean fitness values of compared The ANOVA results in Table 9 show that the mean
algorithms, such that: fitness values are significantly different from each other
• h0 : l1 = l2 = l3, where l is the mean. since F-values are always greater than the F-critical value

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Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7949

Fig. 3 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S3 Fig. 6 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S6
parameter settings (population size = 5) parameter settings (population size = 5)

Table 9 ANOVA test results for algorithms with a 5-population size

Settings F-critical F-value P-value

S1 2.47 177.7 3E-43

S2 2.47 129.1 2E-37
S3 2.47 173.2 1E-42
S4 2.47 88.7 3E-31
S5 2.47 106.1 4E-34
S6 2.47 97.08 1E-32

Fig. 4 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S4

parameter settings (population size = 5) 5.2.2 Simulation results for a population sample size of 20

Table 10 displays the statistical findings for trials with a

Fig. 5 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S5
parameter settings (population size = 5)
and P-values are less than a significance level of 0.05. As a
result, there is enough evidence to reject the h0 hypothesis
and accept the h1 hypothesis, which states that not all mean
fitness values are equal to each other and that there is a
significant difference in the fitness mean outcomes.
population size of 20. The DEA surpasses the consensus of
the other algorithm and yields the best mean values and
best convergence rates across all trials. GA and FPA came
in second with quite similar performance. With lower
performance scores, BWOA and HSA are third. The best
convergence results of the comparison algorithms for var-
ious parameter values are shown in Figs. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and
12.
In addition, ANOVA statistical method is employed to
determine whether or not the results obtained by the
comparison algorithm differ significantly from each other,
with the null hypothesis (h0 ) and the alternative hypothesis
(h1 ) being as follows:
• h0 : l1 = l2 = l3, where l is the mean.
• h1 : At least one of the means is different.
The ANOVA findings, shown in Table 11, demonstrate
that there are substantial differences between the mean
fitness values because the F-values are always higher than
the F-critical value and the p-values are below the

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7950 M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem

Table 10 Statistical fitness

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6
value results of 20 experimental
trials with a population size of GA
20
Mean 28,065.5 29,465.5 28,125.2 29,479.6 28,304.9 29,347.4
Std 463.3 477.2 519.6 419.1 635.1 522.5
Best 27,248 28,571 27,238 28,606 27,037 28,199
Worst 29,063 30,260 29,179 30,367 29,336 30,188
HSA
Mean 40,490.4 40,576.6 39,960.8 40,259.5 40,680.1 40,544.3
Std 1118.3 1267.5 1472.4 1426.8 1443.9 1381.0
Best 38,463 37,865 37,044 36,754 37,566 37,800
Worst 42,077 42,893 42,282 42,169 42,735 43,099
DEA
Mean 23,917.6 23,911.6 24,086.0 23,734.8 24,730.3 23,926.6
Std 761.1 376.6 795.3 614.1 1458.9 1266.6
Best 23,051 23,260 22,878 22,982 22,651 22,737
Worst 25,496 24,835 26,220 25,423 27,295 28,050
BWOA
Mean 36,816.7 36,005.6 36,890.2 35,827.5 37,883.9 37,049.0
Std 2437.7 1710.6 1315.9 1607.4 1669.4 1448.2
Best 31,948 32,855 33,580 33,016 34,586 34,115
Worst 40,931 41,085 38,955 38,402 42,180 38,896
FPA
Mean 29,874.4 31,554.3 28,429.7 29,473.3 28,987.5 28,675.9
Std 1726.6 2088.7 1987.1 2443.4 2187.1 2202.5
Best 26,101 28,320 24,607 26,086 23,439 25,256
Worst 32,089 34,997 31,205 35,142 32,074 33,669
The best mean results are highlighted in bold font

Fig. 7 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S1 Fig. 8 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S2
parameter settings (population size = 20) parameter settings (population size = 20)

significance level of 0.05. As a result, there is enough there is a discernible difference in the mean fitness results,
support to accept the h1 hypothesis, which states that not hence rejecting the h0 hypothesis.
all mean fitness values are equal to each other and that

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Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7951

Fig. 9 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S3 Fig. 12 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S6
parameter settings (population size = 20) parameter settings (population size = 20)

Table 11 ANOVA test results for algorithms with a 20-population

size
Settings F-critical F-value P-value

S1 2.47 411.4 4.7E-59

S2 2.47 434.9 3.8E-60
S3 2.47 504.0 4.9E-63
S4 2.47 367.1 7.6E-57
S5 2.47 380.5 1.5E-57
S6 2.47 423.3 1.3E-59

Fig. 10 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S4

parameter settings (population size = 20)
Fig. 11 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S5
parameter settings (population size = 20)
5.2.3 Simulation results for a population sample size of 50
Table 12 presents the statistical results for trials with a
population size of 50. Similarly, the DEA outperforms the
others in terms of best mean values and best convergence
rates across all trials, followed by GA, FPA, BWOA, and
then HSA, respectively. The best convergence results for
the comparative algorithms in various parameter settings
are displayed in Figs. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.
Additionally, ANOVA statistical method is employed to
determine whether or not the outcomes produced by the
compared algorithms differ significantly from one another,
with the null hypothesis (h0 ) and the alternative hypothesis
(h1 ) being as follows:
• h0 : l1 = l2 = l3, where l is the mean.
• h1 : At least one of the means is different.
The ANOVA findings, shown in Table 13, demonstrate
the existence of significant differences between the mean
fitness values since the F-values are always higher than the
F-critical value and the p-values are below the significance
level of 0.05. As a result, there is enough support to accept
the h1 hypothesis, which states that not all mean fitness
values are equal to each other and that there is a discernible

123
7952 M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem

Table 12 Statistical fitness

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6
value results of 20 experimental
trials with a population size of GA
50
Mean 28,921.8 29,989.9 28,828.3 29,865.5 28,720.8 30,021.7
Std 393.7 555.4 458.3 460.9 529.4 600.7
Best 28,267 29,006 27,992 29,014 27,515 29,227
Worst 29,909 30,730 29,709 30,682 29,412 31,017
HSA
Mean 40,864.1 40,648.3 40,689.2 40,125.4 40,400.8 40,096.3
Std 1220.9 1154.0 959.7 1266.2 1228.3 1212.6
Best 37,971 38,769 39,147 38,572 38,144 37,457
Worst 42,722 42,610 42,372 42,787 41,924 41,470
DEA
Mean 27,596.4 28,332.0 26,833.9 27,788.0 27,317.3 29,194.2
Std 740.9 908.5 883.4 787.1 979.7 1034.7
Best 26,001 26,542 25,230 26,441 26,102 27,792
Worst 29,170 30,424 29,040 28,972 29,750 31,296
BWOA
Mean 37,337.2 37,055.3 38,485.5 37,978.0 39,512.2 39,873.5
Std 1181.3 1092.3 1336.6 967.5 870.8 690.0
Best 34,606 34,739 36,347 35,520 38,125 38,512
Worst 39,441 38,963 41,862 39,576 40,802 41,007
FPA
Mean 33,486.5 34,632.8 32,963.4 33,029.5 32,343.5 32,107.9
Std 1942.1 2022.0 1500.9 2089.7 1980.5 1567.6
Best 30,006 30,209 30,240 28,367 29,532 28,136
Worst 37,180 37,913 35,406 36,070 35,995 35,628
The best mean results are highlighted in bold font

Fig. 13 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S1 Fig. 14 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S2
parameter settings (population size = 50) parameter settings (population size = 50)

123
Optimizing airport slot scheduling problem using optimization algorithms 7953

Fig. 15 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S3 Fig. 18 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S6
parameter settings (population size = 50) parameter settings (population size = 50)

Table 13 ANOVA test results for algorithms with a 50-population

size
Settings F-critical F-value P-value

S1 2.47 423.4 1.3E-59

S2 2.47 329.3 9.5E-55
S3 2.47 601.1 1.6E-66
S4 2.47 354.3 3.7E-56
S5 2.47 491.4 1.6E-62
S6 2.47 487.7 2.2E-62

Fig. 16 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S4

parameter settings (population size = 50)
5.3 Discussion

As shown in the sections preceding, GA performed better

Fig. 17 Convergence rates of the compared algorithms for S5
parameter settings (population size = 50)
difference in the mean fitness results, hence rejecting the
h0 hypothesis.
in most trials than the other algorithms when the population
size was equal to 5. In contrast, DEA outperforms the
competition for greater population sizes, followed by GA
and FPA. The GA and BWOA also demonstrated high
convergence rates when compared to other algorithms due
to the nature of their search mechanisms, in which more
than one solution is produced in every evolution cycle. In
comparison to BWOA, GA delivered favorable results
across every experiment. Additionally, FPA generated the
best average value of 26,951.4 when the parameter setting
of P and c values are 0.5 and 0.1, respectively.
Figure 19 depicts the lengths of time travelers should
wait for each stage at the KAIA airport, starting with the
plane and moving through the airport’s interior halls before
arriving at the plaza hall outside. The comparative results

123
7954 M. K. Shambour, M. A Abu-Hashem

Fig. 19 Algorithms’
performance in terms of

1766

563
749
429
11
passengers’ waiting times at FPA 3518
every airport’s stage

1697

633

914
413
BWOA 3657

1886

597

965

482
53
DEA 3983

2109

2174
733

485
27
HSA 5528

1705

637

990

419
25
GA 3776

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000

Minutes

Aircrafts Gate Lounges Passport Counters Luggage Area Customs Total waiting time

show that FPA has the best scheduling for all flights during
the day with the least wait times for travelers, followed by
BWOA and GA. The outcomes also showed that the
majority of travelers’ waiting time was spent in the waiting
areas at the arrival gates due to the restricted space set up
for receiving travelers in the passport checkpoints area,
which was followed by the baggage and customs areas.
Finally, the findings indicate that the shortest amount of
time was spent waiting to enter the gate halls.
6 Conclusion and future work
The objective of this study is to optimize the flight
scheduling procedure at the KAIA’s Hajj terminal, begin-
ning with selecting the flight gate, passing through the
airport interior stages, and concluding with the open Plaza
area. Five optimization methods, including DEA, HSA,
GA, FPA, and BWOA, were used to simulate and analyze
the full traveler flow. The developed algorithms provide in-
depth information regarding how to organize arrivals for
passenger groups and highlight any busy or potentially
slow-moving stages. The results demonstrated that GA
outperformed the other algorithms in the majority of trials
with a small population size. DEA, on the other hand,
performs better for larger population sizes.
The findings indicated that travelers spent the majority
of their waiting time at the arrival gate lounge because of
work demand in the passport checkpoints area, followed by
luggage and customs areas. Future research will be focused
on enhancing the usage of airport resources and facilities
through the use of multi-objective optimization algorithms
and carrying out sensitivity analyses with a number of
recently proposed approaches as well as exploring newly
presented approaches, such as those presented in studies by
Alotaibi (2022); Al-Wesabi et al. (2022); Malibari et al.
(2022); Felemban et al. (2022); and Ahmad et al. (2018).
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Deanship of
Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this
work by Grant Code: (22UQU4361183DSR09). The authors would
also like to express their gratitude to Dr. Essam Khan for his advice
and support in the early stages of this work.
Funding This research was funded by the Deanship of Scientific
Research at Umm Al-Qura University, Grant Code:22UQU4361183
DSR09.
Data availability Enquiries about data availability should be directed
to the authors.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The authors have not disclosed any conflict of
interest.
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