Flight schedule design for a charter airline

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Abstract

We consider the problem of designing the flight schedule for a charter airline. Exploiting the network structure of the problem, we develop exact and approximate models and solution approaches, and compare their results using data provided by an airline. We show that quality results can be generated using the exact approach or the heuristic approach, with the heuristic approach capable of generating good solutions very quickly.

Section snippets

Problem statement

Given origin–destination (OD) markets with demand for leisure travel, we consider the problem faced by a charter airline of determining the profit maximizing flight schedule. This problem, referred to as the charter airline service network design problem, is complicated by several operating constraints and considerations, including:

  • Each (OD) market has fixed demand that is different by day of week, with the demand pattern repeating weekly. We assume the specified demand on day d for OD pair o1-d

Network representation

We represent the airline service design problem with a network in which the nodes correspond to trips and certain paths correspond to aircraft routes. For each day of the week, we build a daily network and link the daily networks together to form a single, weekly network.

Problem formulation, solution approach and results

Using the weekly network, we formulate the airline service network design problem as follows.

Special case: One-fleet type

We consider the special case of the charter airline service network design problem in which there exists only one-fleet type f, each aircraft with capacity b. With only one-fleet type, certain problem characteristics can be exploited to create an equivalent, but different model with a stronger LP relaxation.

Begin by considering a direct trip l on day d with fare classes u=1 and 2 and non-negative demand qlu. As pl1pl2, it follows that any optimal passenger assignment strategy must assign trip l

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