Abstract
In actual air cargo handling practice, air cargo terminals are playing an important role in the logistics. When the air cargo handling in airports is not efficient, the cargo logistics have to be delayed. The cost of delay can be significant. There is currently little research concerning the ramp operations of an airport. This paper aims to address some operational issues, mathematical models and solution strategies for a ramp operation. Mixed integer programming (MIP) , Lagrangian relaxation (LR) and a new decomposition approaches are studied for the solution modeling. Some of the mathematical properties are discovered from the model studied. The work also provides some key insights for managing a variety of ramp operations.