Fleet scheduling optimization: A simulated annealing approach

Abstract

The fleet assignment problem belongs to large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. It consists in assigning aircraft types to a fixed schedule in order to obtain the best possible financial gain with the best fit of aircrafts capacities to estimated demand. The next step after the assignment of aircraft types is the aircraft routing, i.e. the assignment of flight sequences to particular aircrafts with respect to scheduled maintenances. In this paper we present an optimization method for the whole fleet scheduling, i.e. the fleet assignment together with the aircraft routing. Our method is based on the simulated annealing heuristic. We have successfully optimized the fleet scheduling for the period of one month and obtained results some 10-12% better than that of the airline company. All tests were performed on a real set of data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.