A two-stage decision dependent stochastic approach for airline flight network expansion

Özge Şafak, Özlem Çavuş, M. Seli̇m Aktürk

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Airlines need to expand their flight networks with developing new routes and introducing more flights to increase their market share. In this work, we propose a two-stage stochastic mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP), which expands an existing flight schedule by operating new flights either with existing fleet resources or a leased aircraft while considering the impact of departure time decisions on the probability distribution of random demand. Moreover, our study helps an airline to link a strategic decision of leasing an aircraft to the tactical aircraft assignment decisions by considering fuel efficiency and seat capacity of the aircraft alternatives in response to new passenger demand. However, the large number of scenarios, nonlinear fuel burn function and nonlinearities due to the decision dependent probabilities become main challenges of solving the problem. In order to deal with the computational requirements of a two-stage stochastic MINLP with decision dependent probabilities, we propose strong conic quadratic and McCormick inequalities, and an exact scenario group wise decomposition algorithm along with a new bounding method. In our computational results, we clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed decomposition algorithm and the strength of the reformulations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)78-101
Number of pages24
JournalTransportation Research Part B: Methodological
Volume158
Early online date28 Feb 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Apr 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors thank the associate editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions, that significantly improved this paper. This research was partially supported by TÜBİTAK under grant 116M542 .

Funding Information:
The authors thank the associate editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions, that significantly improved this paper. This research was partially supported by T?B?TAK under grant 116M542.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Airline flight network expansion
  • Decision dependent probabilities
  • Nonlinear mixed-integer programming
  • Stochastic programming

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Civil and Structural Engineering
  • Transportation

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