A Model for Fleet Assignment in the City-Pair Route Network

The fleet assignment is an important factor affecting the airline's operation costs. Given a flight schedule, which consisted of a set of flights with specified departure and arrival time, a set of aircraft types and a set of restrictions, the airline fleet assignment problem (FAP) is to determined which aircraft type should fly each flight leg. Based on the analysis of the real operation circumstance and the technical parameter of different kinds of aircraft types, a mathematical model for the city-pair network and the corresponding solution are offered in this paper. It is practical for an airline which operates between two branch airports.