Optimization of Fleet Assignment: A Case Study in Turkey

Abstract

Since poor fleet assignment can cause a great increase in costs for airline companies, asolution of the type ‘right fleet for the right flight’ would be very useful. In this paper, a fleetassignment model is set up using the data of the largest Airline Company in Turkey, TurkishAirlines. The aim of this model is to assign the most appropriate fleet type to flights whileminimizing the cost and determining the optimal number of aircraft grounded overnight at eachairport. We set up a model with constraints with thinking all airline operations and solve ourproblem using integer linear programming. Finally, we get an optimum solution which minimizesthe total cost while assigning the fleet type to the flight leg. Using optimization software (Lindo6.1), the solution to this problem generates a minimum daily cost of fleet assignment.

Keywords

• Airline planning
• Fleet assignment
• Linear integer programming
• Optimization