0000000000400672
AUTHOR
Tobias Grosche
An airline connection builder using maximum connection lag with greedy parameter selection
Abstract This paper introduces a methodology for designing an airline connection builder (CB) and adjusting its parameter settings. The objective of the proposed CB is to construct relevant connections that attract passenger demand while avoiding operationally infeasible and commercially irrelevant connections. Using worldwide MIDT booking data, we examined the sensitivity of CB results to the setting of the standard CB parameters maximum connection time and geographical detour. We demonstrated that CB performance can be increased by replacing these two parameters with connection lag, a measure that combines the impact of connection time with geographical detour on the total travel time of …
Simultaneous Airline Scheduling
Currently, there are no solution approaches available to construct and optimize airline schedules within a single model. All existing approaches decompose the problem into smaller and less complex subproblems and solve those subproblems separately. This chapter presents a metaheuristic for simultaneous airline scheduling where several different subproblems are integrated into one single optimization model, except for crew scheduling. The problem-specific metaheuristic uses an adaptive procedure for operator selection to allow an efficient choice between a variety of different operators. Experiments are conducted as proof-of-concept and to calibrate free parameters. Comparing different searc…
Competition for long-haul connecting traffic among airports in Europe and the Middle East
Abstract This paper analyzes the competitive position of major hub airports in Europe and the Middle East for long-haul connecting traffic. We apply a connection builder to construct competitive flight connections. A stand out feature of the proposed connection builder is the calibration of the model parameters using booking data, composed of actual passenger demand between a given origin and destination (O&D) market. The methodology is applied to measure competition between hubs using flight schedule data to calculate connectivity measures like the number of city-pairs connected via a hub airport. Our results show that the Middle Eastern hubs have improved their competitive position, while…
IMPACT OF TIMETABLE SYNCHRONIZATION ON HUB CONNECTIVITY OF EUROPEAN CARRIERS
This paper evaluates the net impact of timetable synchronization on the connectivity of the key European carriers at their main hubs. We measure hub connectivity using a weighted connectivity score (WCS) that takes into account the number and the trip time related quality of flight connections. Based on WCS, we compare hub performance resulting from the existing schedule against a random expectati on calculated from multiple randomized schedule simulations. In each simulated schedule scenario we randomly vary the flight departure and arrival times within the operation hours at a hub and at outbound stations keeping all other flight parameters from the real schedule unchanged.We observe that…