Prediction of Departure Flights’ Taxi-Out Time Based on Intelligent Algorithm Optimized BP

Taxi-out time is the main performance index to evaluate the operational efficiency of major airports. Scientifically and accurately predicting the taxi-out time of departure flights is very important to improve the operational efficiency and coordination decision-making ability of airport. Firstly, the quantifiable influence factors of taxi-out time and their correlation is analyzed, including the number of departure flights, the number of arrival flights, the number of flights pushed back in the same period, the taxi-out time by half-hour in average, the taxi distance, and the number of turns, etc. And then a prediction model of departure flights’ taxi-out time based on BP is constructed. Because the traditional BP neural network is sensitive to the initial weight and threshold and has poor accuracy and stability, the taxi-out time prediction model of BP neural network optimized by intelligent algorithm is proposed. Genetic algorithm (GA) and sparrow search algorithm (SSA) are used to obtain the optimal weight and threshold of BP neural network, which is verified by the actual operation data of a major airport in central and southern China for two weeks. The results show that ① the taxi-out time is strongly correlated with the airport surface traffic flow, moderately correlated with the average taxi-out time, and weakly correlated with the taxi distance and the number of turns. ② The predicted outcome of the 4-element combination prediction model which considers strong correlation and medium correlation factors is the best. After adding weak correlation factors, the prediction accuracy is reduced. ③ By obtaining the local optimal weight and threshold of neural network, intelligent optimization algorithm can effectively improve the accuracy of departure flights’ taxi-out time prediction results. ④ The prediction result of BP neural network optimized based on GA is 1.79% higher than that of MAPE before optimization, MAE is reduced by 7.4 s, and RMSE is reduced by 6.93 s. The prediction result of BP neural network optimized based on SSA is 3.05% higher than that of MAPE before optimization, MAE is reduced by 16.55 s, and RMSE is reduced by 14.31 s. Therefore, Sparrow search algorithm has better optimization effect on the model than genetic algorithm.