Three-stage airline fleet planning model

One of the main factors affecting airline success is bringing supply and demand as closely together as possible. In order to achieve this goal, an airline needs to adopt an appropriate methodological approach for the fleet planning process. Selection of an aircraft for operating a defined route network is a key element which has a direct impact on the increase of an airline's profitability and on the reduction of an airline's costs. The objective of this paper is to develop a robust model for fleet planning that deals with both fleet size and fleet composition problems for airlines operating on short haul and medium haul routes. The three-stage model for fleet planning involves approximate fleet composition, fleet sizing and aircraft type selection based on fuzzy logic, heuristic and analytic approaches, and multi-criteria decision making, respectively. This model is exemplified with a hypothetical airline based at Belgrade Airport.