An integrated approach for an aircraft routing and fuel tankering problem

In the highly competitive airline industry, it is crucial for airlines to minimise operating costs and strengthen their competitiveness. Fuel costs constitute a substantial portion of airline operating costs and are directly related to airlines' profits. In this research, we support the airlines' fuel management by presenting a model that integrates aircraft routing and fuel tankering decisions. The effectiveness of fuel tankering can be enhanced by considering the aircraft routing decisions together, leading to a significant cost reduction for airlines. The integrated model is developed as a mixed-integer linear programming model. The symmetry-breaking methods and decomposition-based heuristic algorithm are also proposed to alleviate the computational burden. A set of computational results illustrates the significant cost-saving effects of the proposed model and the heuristic algorithm.