Agifors Scheduling &
Strategic Planning Conference
Session Themes:
May 19 & 20, 2005
Boeing Longacres Complex
agenda | hotel | registration
If you plan to make a presentation please submit a summary
abstract by April 20th to Kemp Harker at kemp.d.harker@boeing.com
Keynote Theme: Navigating Change / Building for the Future
Keynote Speaker: A. Kent Fisher, Vice President, Future Customer and Strategy, Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Session #1: Technology
Advances in Scheduling & Strategic Planning
What new techniques are being explored to help develop and analyze
networks? Are we continuing to advance our technology or have we reached a
plateau? Is existing technology appropriate and adaptable to changes in
industry?
What can OR Contribute to Code Share Planning?, Richard Schumacher, Lufthansa Systems: Code sharing has become one of common forms of cooperation between partnering airlines during recent years. The driving forces for an increased code sharing vary. The most obvious motivation of code share agreements can be either the cost reduction or the additional revenue through network effects. However, for the time being, code share agreements are often based on gut-feeling and political preferences rather than quantitative analysis of the true economic potential. This presentation analyzes ways to make code sharing decisions on a quantitative basis is proposed, which may lead to improved benefits to both partners involved.
Better targets and stronger links between Revenue Management and Scheduling, Robbie Campion, British Airways: The highly competitive nature of the European shorthaul market results in significant amounts of schedule change from year to year. Also, with pricing through inventory becoming the key lever in the shorthaul market Revenue Management culture is changing to be more target driven. Good quality route level revenue targets are imperative. BA has re-engineered its targeting process to take better account of schedule change. It also opens the way to improving the flow of information into the scheduling process itself and make it more responsive to competitive activity.
Limiting the Amount of Change
in Solutions to Fleet Assignment Problems, Sharon Arroyo and Kemp Harker, Boeing
Commercial Airplanes:
Optimal fleet assignments might identify a large number of equipment changes
when examining future time periods. By limiting the amount of change we
potentially accept a less optimal solution but the changes required to
transition to this assignment set is lower and, thereby, easier to manage.
This presentation identifies how these changes are implemented in Boeing’s Fleet Optimization Model.
Session #2: Schedule Generation: Techniques to Build Effective and Efficient Schedules
What investigative tools are being used to measure schedule quality? Are alternative schedules assessed for schedule robustness or reliability? How does the strategic planning process (impact?) address schedule quality and/ or reliability?
Event-Based Simulation, Terran Melconian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Simulation is becoming an important analysis technique to supplement analytical analyses and estimate network-wide effects of changes. The MIT Extensible Air Network Simulation (MEANS) is a mesoscopic, event-based simulation of airspace and airport phenomena. It models the passage of aircraft, passengers, and crew through the airspace on flights, simulating delays based on congestion and lack of required resources. MEANS has been used to evaluate the effects of both planning and operational changes, such as retiming schedules, rerouting aircraft to protect assets during capacity shortages, and evaluating the effects of a potential increased ability to prioritize flights for departure. We present here a description of the design and operation of the simulation and then give an overview of some results which have been obtained with it, highlighting some benefits of both MEANS specifically and simulation in general.
Using Genetic Algorithms to Create Artificial Schedules, Roger Parker & John Zhang, Boeing: In the process of exploring future aircraft needs, either in support of specific customer needs or general industry analysis, it is often necessary to have in hand a hypothetical, but reasonable schedule for some future time. For example, when dealing with an airline customer, a hypothetical version of the competitor schedules in the markets of interest is valuable, but cannot be generated using any information which is from that competitor.
One method for creation of these artificial schedules is to use genetic algorithms, a method for finding “good,” if not optimal, configurations of complex structures such as airline schedules.
This presentation will describe current results in a study of the feasibility of the genetic algorithm approach to artificial schedule generation that is being conducted by Boeing Commercial Airplane Marketing and Business Strategy. The basic operations of a genetic algorithm will be described – fitness, mating, crossover and mutation – and a specific implementation of these operations that has been found to be appropriate for the artificial schedule problem will then be presented. Algorithmic and computational frameworks will be explored. Results of a number of simulation runs – artificial schedules on an abstract network – will be offered to illustrate the benefits and difficulties of the approach. Recommendations for application to airline analyses will then be offered for discussion.
Session #3: Key Factors in Developing Low-Cost Carrier Schedules
What techniques and/or criteria are used by low cost carriers to develop their schedules? Are advances in operations research employed in the low cost carrier model? As low cost models mature will they adopt pieces of the operations research techniques used by traditional carriers?
Session #4: The Effect of Alliances in Scheduling & Strategic Planning
How do carriers integrate their schedule planning process with alliance partners? Can alliances develop a strategic advantage by tightly coupling their schedules?
What can OR Contribute to Code Share Planning?, Richard Schumacher, Lufthansa Systems: Code sharing has become one of common forms of cooperation between partnering airlines during recent years. The driving forces for an increased code sharing vary. The most obvious motivation of code share agreements can be either the cost reduction or the additional revenue through network effects. However, for the time being, code share agreements are often based on gut-feeling and political preferences rather than quantitative analysis of the true economic potential. This presentation analyzes ways to make code sharing decisions on a quantitative basis is proposed, which may lead to improved benefits to both partners involved.
The Boeing Global Market Allocation System, Fred Ervin, Richard Lonsdale, Roger Parker & John Zhang, Boeing: The Marketing group of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) has a number of tools to analyze critical aspects of the passenger-airline relationship. One such application is called the Global Market Allocation System (GMAS).
GMAS takes the world’s airline schedule and OD demand estimates and generates all the “passenger feasible” paths found that serve any city pair which has regularly scheduled airline service. In the world today, for example, there are approximately 280,000 markets served by about 950 scheduled airlines with some 800,000 flights. GMAS generates about 4.8 million paths and allocate the approximately 28,000,000 passengers that fly in a typical week to those paths.
GMAS is unique in two ways: 1) its size, in that it creates estimates of the travel the entire world network at once, and 2) the unique methodology used to determine the feasibility of the path. The size of the problem is addressed with parallel computing architecture. Discrete choice theory is used to determine the utility value of paths as they are being built. Significant findings have emerged which create working criteria for network separability, essential in breaking the problem up into manageable pieces.
Our presentation will include descriptions of the underlying models and their supporting algorithms, a discussion of the systems architecture and algorithm flow of the system, a sample of results, and an example of how market modeling at this level of detail is valuable to product positioning and design within Boeing.
Session #5: Hubs in Future Networks
How is the role of hub airports evolving? Are their new hybrid models evolving beyond “rolling-hubs” and the “focus city” concept employed by low cost carriers.
A Qualitative Choice Model for the US Airline Network, Dipasis Bhadra and Brendan Hogan, The MITRE Corporation: Center for Advanced Aviation System Development: What are the factors that determine the types of network? Is there any pattern to how the air traffic network is set up with respect to the size of the markets, types of competition, geospatial features, and other structural factors? Have the networks changed empirically meaningfully following the events of 9/11? Are these changes transitory or permanent in nature? Can we lay out the trajectory possibilities of the network and determine factors influencing them?
Using a multi-nomial logit model, we attempt to answer the following two questions: What are the fundamental factors that determine and drive evolutions in the US airline network? Second, how can the changes in the network - either temporary or permanent and empirically meaningful – be adequately explained? Answering these questions may provide us with some important insight into understanding the formation and evolution of the US airline network. Furthermore, this may lead us to improved policy-making in the context of the industry that appears to be ever changing..
Hub - Depeaking Techniques at United, Manmeet Singh, United Airlines: In an effort to reduce congestion and improve reliability at O'Hare International Airport, FAA directed United and other airlines to depeak their flight schedules at O’Hare during peak operation hours. In order to address this, United had to make changes to its flight schedule by moving flights out from the peak zone to bring the number of flight activities within the FAA imposed restrictions. The process of smoothing out the peaks and valleys in United’s O’Hare schedule in order to comply with the FAA mandates is referred to as depeaking.
Building a depeaked schedule that addresses the congestion concerns and preserves United’s business interests at O’Hare requires identifying a set of flights out of a huge network whose movement has the least negative impact on the overall schedule profitability. Over the last year, United has developed a three-phased suite of tools to automate the depeaking process and successfully deployed it to help schedule planners build an optimally depeaked schedule.
Possible Panel Discussions (1):