Operational Aircraft Routing Problem: Some Insights in the Capacitated Maintenance Resources

In aviation industry, airlines solve operational aircraft routing problems (OARP) to assign maintenance-feasible routes to a fleet of aircraft. Note that the scheduled aircraft must be provided with sufficient maintenance resources to prevent costly recovery. Most existing OARP models assume that airlines are given fixed amount of maintenance resources. However, in the case of a capacitated maintenance stations serving more than one airline, resources available to an airline may be highly susceptible to the resource allocation scheme of maintenance providers (MPs). This paper aims to capture the uncertain supply of maintenance resources by modelling the market-based resource allocation schemes of MPs. In particular, two possible scenarios in maintenance stations are explored: (1) each airline has no information about other airlines that shares the same maintenance station; and (2) each airline has complete information about other airlines. This paper discusses game-theoretic models that can be used in these scenarios. It is shown that the equilibrium strategies of airlines in such games contribute to make proper OARP decisions by reducing maintenance misalignments.