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An Integrated Approach for Airline Flight Selection and Timing, Fleet Assignment, and Aircraft Routing

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  • Hanif D. Sherali

    (Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (0118), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061)

  • Ki-Hwan Bae

    (Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (0118), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061)

  • Mohamed Haouari

    (Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar)

Abstract

Airline profits critically depend on the nature and efficiency of service they provide, and accrue from a complex planning process involving schedule design, fleet assignment, aircraft routing, and crew scheduling, which are interrelated to each other within the overall system. We propose in this paper a model that integrates certain aspects of the schedule design, fleet assignment, and aircraft-routing processes, while considering flight retiming and demand recapture issues, along with optional legs, itinerary-based demands, and multiple fare classes. Maintenance routing decisions, as well as through-flight opportunities, are additionally incorporated in our model, and we apply the reformulation-linearization technique to reduce its complexity while introducing hierarchical symmetry-breaking constraints, along with other classes of valid inequalities, to enhance its solvability. A Benders' decomposition-based method is designed to handle the resulting large-scale model formulation. Computational results using real data obtained from United Airlines are presented to demonstrate the potential profitability in applying the proposed approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanif D. Sherali & Ki-Hwan Bae & Mohamed Haouari, 2013. "An Integrated Approach for Airline Flight Selection and Timing, Fleet Assignment, and Aircraft Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(4), pages 455-476, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:47:y:2013:i:4:p:455-476
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.2013.0460
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    6. Başdere, Mehmet & Bilge, Ümit, 2014. "Operational aircraft maintenance routing problem with remaining time consideration," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 235(1), pages 315-328.
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