Dynamic Optimization for Airline Maintenance Operations

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 this, 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, which daily decides the set of aircraft to maintain and the set of pending tasks to execute in each aircraft. The objective is to minimize the expected costs of expired maintenance tasks over the operating horizon. To increase flexibility and reduce costs, we integrate maintenance scheduling with tail assignment decisions. We formulate our problem as a Markov decision process and design dynamic policies based on approximate dynamic programming, including value function approximation, rolling horizon techniques, and a hybrid policy between the latter two that delivers the best results. In a case study based on LATAM airline, we show the value of dynamic optimization by testing our best policies against a simple airline decision rule and a deterministic relaxation with perfect future information. We suggest to schedule tasks requiring less resources first to increase utilization of residual maintenance capacity. Finally, we observe strong economies of scale when sharing maintenance resources between multiple airlines.

ANALISIS PENGARUH BIAYA OPERASIONAL PADA PERUSAHAAN PENERBANGAN NASIONAL

Summarized Indonesian airline executive views on the reason for the cost problem in mayor airline and on the potential areas and measures of cost reduction in airline operation. Present an introduction survey where 3 executives from 3 Indonesian airlines were respondent. In the executive opinion the cost problem in mayor Indonesian airline is primarily due to fuel and oil pricing and money currency. Of the various function in airline maintenance was seen as least cost efficiency, whereas flight operation was seen as an area with most potential for cost reduction. Indonesian airline had made route and fleet changes after the beginning of 2011 to reduce cost, concludes from the analisys result having privatization would be an important step towards more efficient airline operation. Flexibility from Indonesian airline regulatory would be very much welcome and the value chain concept to improve Indonesian airline having competitive adventage and cost leadership differentiation

ANALISIS PENGARUH BIAYA OPERASIONAL PADA PERUSAHAAN PENERBANGAN NASIONAL

Summarized Indonesian airline executive views on the reason for the cost problem in mayor airline andon the potential areas and measures of cost reduction in airline operation. Present an introductionsurvey where 3 executives from 3 Indonesian airlines were respondent. In the executive opinion the costproblem in mayor Indonesian airline is primarily due to fuel and oil pricing and money currency. Of thevarious function in airline maintenance was seen as least cost efficiency, whereas flight operation wasseen as an area with most potential for cost reduction. Indonesian airline had made route and fleetchanges after the beginning of 2011 to reduce cost, concludes from the analisys result havingprivatization would be an important step towards more efficient airline operation. Flexibility fromIndonesian airline regulatory would be very much welcome and the value chain concept to improveIndonesian airline having competitive adventage and cost leadership differentiation.

Airline maintenance strategies – in-house vs. outsourced – an optimization approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a new mathematical modeling approach to help airlines identify which types of heavy aircraft maintenance checks be performed in-house or outsourced. Design/methodology/approach – This study offers a mathematical model to minimize the total cost of heavy maintenance programs over a planning period subject to performing all maintenance programs on time and other side constraints. Findings – The results are very encouraging and somewhat counter-intuitive. The solutions recommend that more expensive and labor intensive checks be outsourced. A detailed analyses of the total maintenance cost breakdown is presented with implications and recommendation. Originality/value – To the best of the knowledge, the literature on quantitative models for airline in-house and outsourced maintenance checks is very limited. The author believes the model and airline cases presented in this paper can help airlines with their strategic maintenance strategies and will initiate further studies in this important area.

RFID Applications in Airline Maintenance Operations

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been widely used in different industries in recent years but its use in the aviation industry has been very limited. In this article, the use of RFID technology is explored in relationship to airlines’ maintenance operations. The main objectives of this article are to assess the current use of RFID in aviation maintenance and to evaluate future opportunities as well as the barriers to this technology in regards to airline maintenance operations. To this end, a survey of airlines was conducted in 2013. The results show that the airline industry has recently taken notice of RFID and that its use is growing. The results also show that airlines are facing several barriers for RFID implementations . They are: lack of knowledge, cost of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration, cost of tags, lack of support from managers, and immaturity of technology. This research has also identified the categories of parts that can benefit the most from RFID.