Airlines solve many different optimization problems and combine the resulting solutions to ensure smooth, minimum-cost operations. Crucial problems are the Fleet Assignment, which assigns aircraft types to flights of a given schedule, and the Tail Assignment, which determines individual flight sequences to be performed by single aircraft. In order to find a cost-optimal solution, many … Read more
Airlines face many different planning processes until the day of operation. These include Fleet Assignment, Tail Assignment and the associated control of ground processes between consecutive flights, called Turnaround Handling. All of these planning problems have in common that they often need to be reoptimized on the day of execution due to unplanned events. In … Read more
Mathematical optimization problems including a time dimension abound. For example, logistics, process optimization and production planning tasks must often be optimized for a range of time periods. Usually, these problems incorporating time structure are very large and cannot be solved to global optimality by modern solvers within a reasonable period of time. Therefore, the so-called … Read more
The occurrence of unexpected aircraft maintenance tasks can produce expensive changes in an airline’s operation. When it comes to critical tasks, it might even cancel programmed flights. Despite of it, the challenge of scheduling aircraft maintenance operations under uncertainty has received limited attention in the scientific literature. We study a dynamic airline maintenance scheduling problem, … Read more