The Tail Assignment Problem: A Case Study at Vueling Airlines

Abstract

To schedule aircraft, assignments of fleet types to flights and of aircraft to routes must be determined. The former is known as the fleet assignment problem while the latter is known as the aircraft routing problem in the literature. Aircraft routing is usually addressed as a feasibility problem whose solution is needed for constructing crew schedules. These problems are usually solved from 4 to 6 months before the day of operations. Therefore, there is limited information regarding each aircraft's operational condition. The tail assignment problem, which has received limited attention in air transportation literature, is solved when additional information regarding operational conditions is revealed aiming at determining each aircraft's route for the day of operations accounting for the originally planned aircraft routes and crew schedules. Therefore, it is a problem to be solved the day before operations. We propose a mathematical programming approach based on sequencing that captures all operational constraints and maintenance requirements while assignment costs are minimized. Computational experiments are based on realistic cases drawn from a Spanish airline, which features a network with more than 1000 flights and more than 100 aircraft.