Abstract
Tail Assignment is the problem of assigning flight legs to aircraft while satisfying all operational constraints, and optimizing some objective function. In this article, we present a hybrid column generation and constraint programming solution approach. This approach can be used to quickly produce solutions for operations management, and also to produce close-to-optimal solutions for long and mid term planning scenarios. We present computational results which illustrate the practical usefulness of the approach.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahuja, R.K., Liu, J., Goodstein, J., Mukherjee, A., Orlin, J.B., Sharma, D.: Solving Multi-Criteria Combined Through Fleet Assignment Models. In: Ciriani, T.A., Fasano, G., Gliozzi, S., Tadei, R. (eds.) Operations Research in Space and Air, pp. 233–256. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (2003)
Andersson, E., Forsman, A., Karisch, S.E., Kohl, N., Sørensson, A.: Problem Solving in Airline Operations. Carmen Research and Technology Report CRTR-0404, Carmen Systems AB, Gothenburg, Sweden (June 2004)
Barnhart, C., Boland, N.L., Clarke, L.W., Johnson, E.L., Nemhauser, G.L., Shenoi, R.G.: Flight String Models for Aircraft Fleeting and Routing. Transportation Science 32(3), 208–220 (1998)
Barnhart, C., Johnson, E.L., Nemhauser, G.L., Savelsbergh, M.W.P., Vance, P.H.: Branch-and-Price: Column Generation for Solving Huge Integer Programs. Operations Research 46(3), 316–329 (1998)
Caprara, A., Focacci, F., Lamma, E., Mello, P., Milano, M., Toth, P., Vigo, D.: Integrating Constraint Logic Programming and Operations Research Techniques for the Crew Rostering Problem. Software − Practice and Experience 28(1), 49–76 (1998)
Clarke, L.W., Johnson, E.L., Nemhauser, G.L., Zhu, Z.: The Aircraft Rotation Problem. Annals of Operations Research 69, 33–46 (1997)
Dantzig, G.B., Wolfe, P.: Decomposition Principle for Linear Programs. Operations Research 8, 101–111 (1960)
Dash Optimization Ltd. Xpress-Optimizer Reference Manual, release 14 (2002)
Desrochers, M., Soumis, F.: A generalized permanent labelling algorithm for the shortest path problem with time windows. INFOR 26(3), 191–212 (1988)
Elf, M., Jünger, M., Kaibel, V.: Rotation Planning for the Continental Service of a European Airline. In: Jager, W., Krebs, H.-J. (eds.) Mathematics – Key Technologies for the Future. Joint Projects between Universities and Industry, pp. 675–689. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Fahle, T., Junker, U., Karisch, S.E., Kohl, N., Sellmann, M., Vaaben, B.: Constraint Programming Based Column Generation for Crew Assignment. Journal of Heuristics 8(1), 59–81 (2002)
Gopalan, R., Talluri, K.T.: The Aircraft Maintenance Routing Problem. Operations Research 46(2), 260–271 (1998)
Grönkvist, M.: Using Constraint Propagation to Accelerate Column Generation in Aircraft Scheduling. In: Proceedings of CPAIOR 2003 (May 2003)
Grönkvist, M.: A Constraint programming Model for Tail Assignment. In: Régin, J.-C., Rueher, M. (eds.) CPAIOR 2004. LNCS, vol. 3011, pp. 142–156. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Grönkvist, M.: The Tail Assignment Problem. PhD thesis, Department of Computing Science, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden (2005)
Hane, C.A., Barnhart, C., Johnson, E.L., Marsten, R.E., Nemhauser, G.L., Sigismondi, G.: The fleet assignment problem: solving a large-scale integer program. Mathematical Programming 70, 211–232 (1995)
ILOG Inc. ILOG CPLEX 7.5 Reference Manual (2001)
Jarrah, A.I., Strehler, J.C.: An optimization model for assigning through flights. IIE Transactions 32(3), 237–244 (2000)
Kabbani, N.M., Patty, B.W.: Aircraft Routing at American Airlines. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Symposium of AGIFORS (1992)
Lübbecke, M.E., Desrosiers, J.: Selected Topics in Column Generation. Les Cahiers du GERAD G-2002-64, Department of Mathematical Optimization, Braunschweig University of Technology, and GERAD (2002), Submitted to Operations Research
Régin, J.-C.: A filtering algorithm for constraints of difference in CSPs. In: Proceedings of AAAI 1994, pp. 362–367 (1994)
Rousseau, L.-M., Gendreau, M., Pesant, G.: Solving small VRPTWs with Constraint Programming Based Column Generation. In: Proceedings of CPAIOR 2002 (March 2002)
Talluri, K.T.: The Four-Day Aircraft Maintenance Problem. Transportation Science 32, 43–53 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gabteni, S., Grönkvist, M. (2006). A Hybrid Column Generation and Constraint Programming Optimizer for the Tail Assignment Problem. In: Beck, J.C., Smith, B.M. (eds) Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems. CPAIOR 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3990. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11757375_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11757375_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-34306-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-34307-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)