P-hub airline network design incorporating interaction between elastic demand and network structure

Abstract

This paper innovates the p-hub airline network median design method. Researchers present a new mathematical programming model, which incorporates the interaction between elastic demand in air passenger market and airline network structure. The model optimizes both the ticket prices and the profit of airline company, and subsequently determines the passenger volume influenced by different network structure. The effectiveness and practicability of the model are demonstrated by a realistic example of Chinese airline network which includes 15 major airports. Numerical analysis result indicates that hub locations tend to select the airports which have bigger passenger volume. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.