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Exact approaches for integrated aircraft fleeting and routing at TunisAir

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Abstract

We describe models and exact solutions approaches for an integrated aircraft fleeting and routing problem arising at TunisAir. Given a schedule of flights to be flown, the problem consists of determining a minimum cost route assignment for each aircraft so as to cover each flight by exactly one aircraft while satisfying maintenance activity constraints. We investigate two tailored approaches for this problem: Benders decomposition and branch-and-price. Computational experiments conducted on real-data provide evidence that the branch-and-price approach outperforms the Benders decomposition approach and delivers optimal solutions within moderate CPU times. On the other hand, the Benders algorithm yields very quickly high quality near-optimal solutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mohamed Haouari

  2. Princess Fatimah Alnijris’ Research Chair for AMT, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Mohamed Haouari

  3. Combinatorial Optimization Research Group—ROI, Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie, BP 743, 2078, La Marsa, Tunisia

    Farah Zeghal Mansour & Najla Aissaoui

  4. Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    Hanif D. Sherali

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  1. Mohamed Haouari
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  2. Hanif D. Sherali
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  3. Farah Zeghal Mansour
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  4. Najla Aissaoui
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Correspondence to Mohamed Haouari.

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Haouari, M., Sherali, H.D., Mansour, F.Z. et al. Exact approaches for integrated aircraft fleeting and routing at TunisAir. Comput Optim Appl 49, 213–239 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10589-009-9292-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10589-009-9292-z

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