An airline connection builder using maximum connection lag with greedy parameter selection

This paper introduces a methodology for designing an airline connection builder (CB) and adjusting its parameter settings. The objective of the proposed CB is to construct relevant connections that attract passenger demand while avoiding operationally infeasible and commercially irrelevant connections. Using worldwide MIDT booking data, we examined the sensitivity of CB results to the setting of the standard CB parameters maximum connection time and geographical detour. We demonstrated that CB performance can be increased by replacing these two parameters with connection lag, a measure that combines the impact of connection time with geographical detour on the total travel time of a given connection. We also found that the willingness of a passenger to book slower connections and the relationship between the number of passenger bookings and generated connections strongly depends on the O&D distance. Better results can thus be obtained by greedily determining the distance-specific CB parameter settings. The greedy adjustment of parameter settings reduces the number of unattractive connections generated, while keeping the number of covered passenger bookings high.