With increasing levels of air traffic, making effective use of limited airp
ort capacity is obviously important. This paper reports on an investigation
undertaken by National Air Traffic Services in the UK into improving runwa
y utilisation at London Heathrow. This investigation centred on developing
an algorithm for improving the scheduling of aircraft waiting to land. The
heuristic algorithm developed (a population heuristic) is discussed and res
ults presented using actual operational data relating to aircraft landings
at London Heathrow. This data indicates that our algorithm could have impro
ved on air traffic control decisions in such cases by between 2-5 % in term
s of reducing the timespan required to land all of the aircraft considered.