Traditional methods for determining airline fleet composition could not reflect the impact of network effects on fleet composition. To solve this problem for airlines operating in the mode of Hub & Spoke network, the passenger mix problem was incorporated into the model of determining airline fleet composition. The purchasing number of aircrafts in each fleet type, the frequencies of each aircraft type flying on legs and the spilling number of passengers from each itinerary were treated as decision variables. The limitations including maximum flying frequencies on each leg, available flying time each fleet type can provide and maximum passengers spilled from each flight leg were considered as constraints. A model to minimize the fleet planning cost was constructed. The numerical example shows that the fleet planning cost derived from this proposed model is 46266381.64 Yuan and reduces by 3914969.70 Yuan compared to the result from the traditional leg-based model. In hence, this proposed model is effective and feasible.
An Airline Fleet Planning Method Constraint with Minimal Cost
