To reduce the workload of air traffic operators in airport surface operation, curtail the cost of taxi-out and the pollutant emission, a new gate-hold penalty-based departure pushback control strategy was proposed based on the traditional N-control strategy. The algorithm could search the optimal threshold for taxiway queuing system, and require the pushback rate changes with the real-time taxiway queue length. Taken the pushback operational cost as objective function, the control strategy model and its two various forms were carried out, and an iterative Markov chain-based optimization algorithm was developed to solve the model. Simulation results with PEK airport data indicate that the proposed pushback strategy could transfer taxiway waiting time into gate-hold time to minimize the total operational cost. The strategy could save 2 995 minutes per day on total taxi-out time and 44.04% fuel burn cost than situation of without pushback strategies, also reduce departure operational cost effectively.