Abstract
Air cargo transportation is an essential component in the freight transportation market, primarily due to the transportation requirements of time-sensitive products. Air cargo transportation plays an increasingly important role alongside economic development. Cargo flight network design and fleet routing selection significantly affect the performance of the air cargo transportation. In this research, we propose an integrated model simultaneously considering cargo flight network design and the fleet routing selection for the air cargo transportation. Two transportation modes, the direct transportation mode in point-to-point networks and the transshipment mode in hub-and-spoke networks, are compared. In order to solve the proposed optimization problem, a swarm-intelligence-based algorithm is adapted. Numerical experiments were conducted to examine and validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model and algorithm. The computational results suggest that the proper settings of hub and transshipment route selection in an air cargo transportation network can significantly reduce the transportation cost, which can provide practical managerial insights for the air cargo transportation industry.
Highlights
The importance of air cargo transportation rises in step with economic development
Shunfeng has purchased more than 40 airplanes dedicated to air cargo transportation, and built its own air cargo airport in Hubei province acting as its international logistics hub
We propose an integrated model for air cargo transportation network design and flight route selection in view of the practical requirements of air cargo transportation
Summary
The importance of air cargo transportation rises in step with economic development. Air cargo is an essential part of the global trading system [1]. Lin et al [11] compared the economic effect of center-to-center directs on hub-and-spoke networks for air express common carriers. They proposed an integral constrained generalized hub-and-spoke network design model in a capacitated and directed network configuration [12]. In hub-and-spoke networks, the transshipment transportation of air cargo becomes a promising and popular trend in view of the low transportation cost. We propose an integrated model for air cargo transportation network design and flight route selection in view of the practical requirements of air cargo transportation. The balance between time-sensitivity and flow economy of scale can be handled by the integration of point-to-point network and hub-and-spoke network, and the corresponding flight route selection and transshipment arrangements.
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