Incorporating Fleet Assignment with Aircraft Allocation to Measure Fleet-Level Metrics

Abstract

Studies of the environmental and economic impact of new aircraft requires both predictions of the new aircraft’s performance and a representation of how airlines will use the new aircraft as part of their fleets. Aircraft allocation and fleet assignment allow the study of fleet-level metrics given new aircraft technologies or concepts, because these problems incorporate the new aircraft / technology into the existing fleet and find the optimal use of all available aircraft, which represents the decision making of the airline. However, to run meaningful studies that require varying different parameters and examining different scenarios, the allocation or assignment problem must be solved quickly and also represent real-world airline behavior as well as possible. Furthermore, work done to date has used various assumptions and abstractions to simplify the problem. Examining different ways to formulate this problem as an aircraft allocation problem, a fleet assignment problem, an airline scheduling problem, or possibly a hybrid formulation of all three, will lead to a formulation to best mimic the airline decision making process. The formulation and decision making model will find the optimal use of new and old aircraft to assess the fleet-level impact of new aircraft concepts and technologies and allow meaningful fleet-level studies and analyses to properly measure and assess the full environmental and economic impact of new aircraft concepts and technologies.