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A Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for Aircraft Routing with Crew Assignment for On-Demand Air Transportation

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Computational Logistics (ICCL 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 13004))

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Abstract

We address the aircraft routing problem with crew assignment in the context of on-demand air transportation. This problem involves the design of least-cost routes for an aircraft set in order to service private flight requests, considering the customer preferences, fleet characteristics and maintenance events. Additionally, a crew team has to be assigned to each route while satisfying the crew legislation, including duty time limitations and minimum rest times. Despite its practical relevance, integrated aircraft routing and crew assignment has been barely explored in the literature addressing on-demand air transportation. In this paper, we propose a tailored branch-and-cut algorithm to effectively solve the addressed problem, which resorts to a strategy based on dynamic programming to separate cuts that guarantee the feasibility regarding crew legislation. In computational experiments carried out using real-life data provided by a company, the method obtained optimal solutions for all instances in less than five minutes. Moreover, these solutions indicate a potential improvement of around 23% in the operational cost when compared to the routes designed by the company, which highlights the benefits of using the proposed approach in practice.

Supported by São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [grant numbers 19/22235-6, 19/23596-2, 20/11602-5, 16/01860-1], Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) [Finance Code 001] and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [grant number 313220/2020-4].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Rafael Ajudarte de Campos, Thiago Vieira & Pedro Munari

Authors
  1. Rafael Ajudarte de Campos
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  2. Thiago Vieira
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  3. Pedro Munari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael Ajudarte de Campos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IEBIS, University of Twente, Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands

    Martijn Mes

  2. IEBIS, University of Twente, Enschede, Overijssel, The Netherlands

    Eduardo Lalla-Ruiz

  3. IWI-Institute of Information Systems, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Stefan Voß

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de Campos, R.A., Vieira, T., Munari, P. (2021). A Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for Aircraft Routing with Crew Assignment for On-Demand Air Transportation. In: Mes, M., Lalla-Ruiz, E., Voß, S. (eds) Computational Logistics. ICCL 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13004. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87672-2_40

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87672-2_40

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87671-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-87672-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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