Abstract: Aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling (ASS) is a key problem of air traffic control (ATC). According to the ASS model, a balanced update ant colony algorithm (BUACO) is proposed in this paper. BUACO balanced update the pheromone and enhance the global search ability of the algorithm by taking advantage of the difference between the current solution and the global optimal solution, in order to generate a better solution. The experiments show that BUACO’s performance can be increased by 12.9% with a shorter computation time than the comparison algorithms when solving ASS problem, which is conductive to arrange a suitable flight landing sequence based on realtime situation for ATC. 

Key words: aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling, ant colony optimization, balanced update, actual seating passengers