Fleet assignment with connection dependent ground times

Abstract

Given a flight schedule, which consists of a set of (lights with specified departure and arrival times, a set of aircraft types and a set of restrictions, the airline fleet assignment problem (FAP) is to determine which aircraft type should fly each flight. As the FAP is only one step in a sequence of several optimization problems, important restrictions of later steps should also be considered in the FAP. This paper shows how one type of these restrictions, connection dependent ground times, can be added to the fleet assignment problem and presents three optimization methods that can solve real-world problem instances with more than 6000 legs within minutes. © Springer-Verlag 2003.