AccScience Publishing / IJOCTA / Volume 2 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.11121/ijocta.01.2012.0050
OPTIMIZATION & APPLICATIONS

Optimization of Fleet Assignment: A Case Study in Turkey

Yavuz OZDEMI1 Huseyin BASLIGIL2 Kemal Gokhan NALBANT3
Show Less
1 Department of Industrial Engineering, Yildiz Technical University - Turkey
Received: 1 May 2011 | Published online: 13 December 2011
© 2011 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Since poor fleet assignment can cause a great increase in costs for airline companies, a  solution of the type ‘right fleet for the right flight’ would be very useful. In this paper, a fleet  assignment model is set up using the data of the largest Airline Company in Turkey, Turkish  Airlines. The aim of this model is to assign the most appropriate fleet type to flights while  minimizing the cost and determining the optimal number of aircraft grounded overnight at each  airport. We set up a model with constraints with thinking all airline operations and solve our  problem using integer linear programming. Finally, we get an optimum solution which minimizes  the total cost while assigning the fleet type to the flight leg. Using optimization software (Lindo  6.1), the solution to this problem generates a minimum daily cost of fleet assignment.

Keywords
Airline planning
Fleet assignment
Linear integer programming
Optimization.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
References

[1] Etschmaier, M. and Mathaisel, D., Airline  Scheduling: An Overview. Transportation  Science, 19, 127-138 (1985)

[2] Belanger, N., Desaulniers G., Soumis, F.,  Desrosiers J., and Lavigne J., Weekly airline  fleet assignment with homogeneity.  Transportation Research Part B, 40, 306–318  (2006).

[3] Abara, J., Applying integer linear  programming to the fleet assignment problem.  Interfaces, 19/4, 20-28 (1989).

[4] Belanger, N., Desaulniers, G., Soumis, F., and  Desrosiers J., Periodic airline fleet assignment  with time windows, spacing constraints, and  time dependent revenues. European Journal of  Operational Research, 175, 1754–1766 (2006).

[5] Kliewer, G. and Tschöke, S., A general  parallel simulated annealing library and its  application in airline industry. In: Proceedings  of the 14th International Parallel and  Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS  2000), 55-61 (2000).

[6] Chung, T. and Chung J., Airline fleet  assignment using genetic algorithms. In:  Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary  Computation Conference (GECCO2002), New  York, p.255 (2002).

[7] Subramanian, R., Scheff Jr., R.P., Quillinan,  J.D., Wiper, D.S., and Marsten, R.E.,  Coldstart: Fleet assignment at Delta Airlines.  Interfaces, 24 (1), 104-120 (1994).

[8] Barnhart, C., Belobaba, P.P., and Odoni, A.R.,  Applications of operations research in the air  transport industry. Transportation Science, 37  (4), 368-391 (2003).

[9] Barnhart, C., Kniker T.S., and Lohatepanont,  M., Itinerary-based airline fleet assignment.  Transportation Science, 36 (2), 199-217  (2002).

[10] Talluri, K.T., Swapping applications in a daily  airline fleet assignment. Transportation  Science, 30 (3), 237-248 (1996).

[11] Andersson, E., Efthymios, H., Kohl, N., and  Wedelin, D., Crew pairing optimization. In: Yu, G., ed. Operations Research in the Airline  Industry. Boston: Kluwer Academic  Publishers, 1-31 (1998).

[12] Emden-Weinert, T. and Proksch, M., Best  practice simulated annealing for the airlinecrew scheduling problem. Journal of  Heuristics, 5 (4), 419-436 (1999).

[13] Jarrah, A.I., Goodstein, J., and Narasimhan, R.,  An efficient airline re-fleeting model for the  incremental modification of planned fleet  assignments. Transportation Science, 34 (4),  349-363 (2000).

[14] Gopalan, R. and Talluri, K.T., Mathematical  models in airline schedule planning: A survey.  Annals of Operations Research, 76, 155–185  (1998).

[15] Kontogiorgis, S. and Acharya. S., US Airways  automates its weekend fleet assignment.  Interfaces, 29 (3), 52-62 (1999).

[16] Grosche, T., Computational intelligence in  integrated airline scheduling. Springer,  Germany 7-47 (2009).

[17] Talluri, K.T., The four-day aircraft  maintenance routing problem. Transportation  Science, 32 (1), 43–53 (1998).

[18] Bard, J.F., Cunningham, I.G., Improving  through-flight schedules. IIE Transportation, 19 (3), 242–251 (1987).

[19] Cordeau, J.-F., Stojkovic, G., Soumis, F., and  Desrosiers, J., Benders decomposition for  simultaneous aircraft routing and crew  scheduling.  375–388 (2001). Transportation Science, 35 (4), 

[20] Klabjan, D., Johnson, E.L., Nemhauser, G.L.,  Gelman, E., and Ramaswamy, S., Airline crew  scheduling with time windows and plane-count  constraints. Transportation Science, 36 (3),  337–348 (2002)

[21] Clarke, L.W., Johnson, E., Nemhauser, G.L.,  and Zhu, Z., The aircraft rotation problem.  Annals of Operations Research, 69, 33–46  (1997).

[22] Sherali, H.D., Bish, E.K., and Zhu, X., Airline  fleet assignment concepts, models, and  algorithms. European Journal of Operational  Research, 172, 1-30 (2006).

[23] Haouari M., Aissaoui N., and Mansour F.Z.,  Network flow-based approaches for integrated  aircraft fleeting and routing. European Journal  of Operational Research, 193, 591–599 (2009)

[24] Papadakos N., Integrated Airline Scheduling:  Decomposition and Acceleration Techniques.  IC-PARC (centre for Planning and Resource  Control), 1-38 (2006).

[25] Desaulniers, G., Desrosiers, J., Dumas, Y.,  Solomon, M., and Soumis, F., Daily aircraft  routing and scheduling. Management Science,  43 (6), 841-855 (1997).

[26] Barnhart, C., Boland, N., Clarke, L., Johnson,  E., Nemhauser, G., and Shenoi, R., Flight  string models for aircraft fleeting and routing.  Transportation Science, 32 (3), 208-220  (1998).

[27] Bazargan, M., Airline Operations and  Scheduling. 2nd ed. Ashgate, USA, 40-58  (2004).

[28] Hane, C.A., Barnhart, C., Johnson, E.L.,  Marsten, R.E., Nemhauser, G.L., and  Sigismondi, G., The Fleet Assignment  Problem: Solving a Large-scale Integer  Program. Mathematical Programming, 70,  211-32 (1995)

Share
Back to top
An International Journal of Optimization and Control: Theories & Applications, Electronic ISSN: 2146-5703 Print ISSN: 2146-0957, Published by AccScience Publishing