Fuzzy AHP approach to passenger aircraft type selection

In order to choose an aircraft to operate a defined set of routes, an airline needs to consider passenger's interests in addition to its own interests. The goal of the paper is to propose a methodology which will help choose aircraft type(s) that meets the market conditions and airline's requirements best for known route network and known forecasted air travel demand by routes. Although this is a multi-criteria problem, planners usually have to make decisions under uncertainty, incorporating vagueness of human thinking. Therefore, we proposed the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) based approach. To derive crisp priorities from fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices, a logarithmic fuzzy preference programming (LFPP) method is employed, as well as an improved LFPP method. With regard to different criteria that involve quantitative and qualitative aspects, three criteria and ten sub-criteria are selected. Experts from different airlines and universities responded to an interview, contributing to the design of pairwise comparison matrices for the criteria and sub-criteria. The regional airline case study is used to show the applicability of the methodology proposed.