Future aircraft networks and schedules

Abstract

This thesis has focused on an aircraft schedule and network design problem that involves multiple types of aircraft and flight service. First, this thesis expands a business model for integrating on-demand flight services with the traditional scheduled flight services. Then, this thesis proposes a three-step approach to the design of aircraft schedules and networks from scratch. After developing models in the three steps and creating large-scale instances of these models, this dissertation develops iterative algorithms and subproblem approaches to solving these instances, and it presents computational results of these large-scale instances. To validate the models and solution algorithms developed, this thesis compares the daily flight schedules that it designed with the schedules of the existing airlines. In addition, it discusses the implication of using new aircraft in the future flight schedules. Finally, future research in three areas--model, computational method, and simulation for validation--is proposed.