Airline Empires - Airline and Aviation Articles, Airline Simulation - Dynamic Fleet Planning

Dynamic Fleet Planning - a Regional Application

Written by Courtney Miller
Tuesday, 24 January 2006
Page 2 of 9 Adjusting the schedule using dynamic fleet planning can take place anytime from when the schedule has been created until up to an hour before the flight is scheduled to depart. This allows approximately a six month window during witch demand can be tracked and supply matched accordingly. During this six month window, the demand and the trends in demand, are constantly changing, up until the time of departure. While revenue management has allowed a relatively accurate prediction of the demand on the flight, dynamic fleet planning enables a flexible response should that prediction prove incorrect. Instead of limiting the number of passengers by the number of seats available, and controlling them with price, a change in capacity will not only reduce the amount of demand spilled, but will also open more seats to passengers who have not yet purchased tickets and who would have been forced to go to a competitor to complete their trip. 2.0 The Requirements of Dynamic Fleet Planning Fleet – The benefits of dynamic fleet planning are best realized while operating a common fleet type. Using aircraft of a common type would allow airlines to dynamically assign aircraft with a minimum of disruption to the ground operations, crew scheduling, and passenger comfort. Common crew ratings are especially helpful since an aircraft can be swapped without having to reschedule the crew, which can be costly due to labor contracts. Fleet commonality also reduces the costs for: • training crews, mechanics and ground crewmembers • maintaining a spare parts inventory • obtaining ground equipment suitable for different aircraft In order to operate dynamic fleet planning successfully, the aircraft used must be of different capacities. It is pointless to swap two aircraft with the same capacity. An optimum increase in capacity between aircraft is around 20%, as that allows the aircraft to differ in capacity enough without hindering flexibility or creating too large a gap between the operational abilities of the aircraft. However, an aircraft with an increase in capacity will also have a higher operating cost. For dynamic fleet planning to be truly effective, the increase in operating cost must be less than the increase in capacity. Aircraft of similar abilities are also important to the success of dynamic fleet planning. In order to be able to swap a large portion of the fleet, the aircraft must be of similar ranges and speeds, and must be able to use the much of same airport infrastructure. For example, you could not swap a large aircraft with a range of 3,000 miles with a smaller aircraft of 2,000 miles on a route 2,500 miles long. This route could not be included in the dynamic fleet planning model. Network – It is critical that, before we can swap airplanes, we must have a common place from which to swap them. It is impossible to swap an aircraft with one that is not present, and highly uneconomical to reposition an aircraft empty for the purpose of a swap. Airlines that operate a hub-and-spoke network stand to gain most from dynamic fleet planning. It is easy to swap aircraft during banks, since there are a large number of aircraft available at the same time. Linear network designs could benefit from dynamic fleet planning, however there is no common airport from which aircraft could be easily swapped. This would lead to missed opportunities, higher cost, and more delays at the hand of dynamic fleet planning. << Start < Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next > End >>