| dc.description.abstract | Recently, the trend has been for major air carriers enter into alliances with other carriers as a means of forming global networks and reaching a more efficient level of operations. Fleet routing and flight scheduling are not only important in individual airline operations, but also affect these alliances. The setting of a good coordinated fleet routing and flight scheduling can not only enhance the operating performance of the allied airlines, but can also be a useful reference for allied airlines in their decision-making process. However, currently in Taiwan most fleet routing and flight scheduling formulation is done on a trial-and-error process. To do this the airline iteratively constructs and evaluates the schedule phases manually and independently of each other, without optimization from a systemic perspective. As well most past research on fleet routing and flight scheduling has mainly focused on single carrier transportation, which is difficult to apply to a coordinated scheduling problem. Therefore, to fill this gap in this dissertation, we develop several coordinated scheduling models, in order to help the allied airlines solve for the most satisfactory fleet routes and timetables. It is expected that such models will be useful tools allowing the allied carriers to plan the most suitable fleet routes and timetables for short-term operations.
To evaluate how the proposed coordinated scheduling models perform in practice, we perform apply them to both passenger and cargo fleet routing and flight scheduling problems. The dissertation includes three essays. In the first, we develop several coordinated scheduling models, which will help the allied airlines solve for the most satisfactory fleet routes and timetables within the alliance. In the second, we also develop several coordinated scheduling models combining airport selection, fleet routing and timetable setting, in order to help cargo airlines solve for the most satisfactory cargo fleet within an alliance. In the third, we develop a mixed-stop heuristic and a family of Lagrangian based algorithms for solving coordinated fleet routing and flight scheduling problems. We perform these applications using real operating data, with reasonable simplifications. The C computer language is used to write the necessary programs, coupled with the CPLEX mathematical programming solver, to solve the problems. Finally, conclusions and suggestions for future research are given. | en_US |