Strategic and tactical flight to check-in counter assignment

Efficient check-in services are key to enabling smooth logistics at airports. Being the first activity of a passenger’s trip, check-in services impact a passenger’s travel experience and satisfaction level. In addition, they feed into subsequent activities such as security checks, baggage handling, and boarding. Central to the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of check-in services is the assignment of check-in counters to flights. This assignment occurs at three levels: strategic when contracting seasonal flight programs and feeding into personnel timetabling, tactical when adjusting strategic plans to account for the occupancy ratios of flights, and operational to account for the arrival patterns of passengers on the day of the flight. Although highly relevant, the operational problem relies on already established master schedules and offers little flexibility in terms of altering the number of check-in-counters that can be allocated. This paper focuses on the strategic and tactical problems for the main terminal of an international airport. The strategic decision problem checks the feasibility of assigning airlines to the zones of the terminal and allocating the required number of adjacent check-in counters to scheduled flights. It is modeled as a binary goal program that minimizes the number of deficient flights. Because all scheduled flights must be allocated check-in counters, the paper proposes an alternative two-phase approach. Phase one uses a mixed integer program to assign airlines to zones and allocate an integer number of counters to each flight. It minimizes the total number of deficient counters while guaranteeing a minimal number of counters per flight. For each zone, phase two assigns the pre-allocated counters to each flight. Both strategic models benefit from modeling artifacts that reduce their number of variables and avoid them being directly cognizant of time. The tactical problem reduces deficiencies by allowing the number of flight-specific check-in counters to vary across the time window of a flight. Although modeled as a time-indexed binary program, this model benefits from preprocessed sets used to define its constraints, and substantially reduce their numbers. These modeling techniques enable the off-the-shelf solver CPLEX, to optimally solve all models, using real data corresponding to the highest demand of prior years at the main terminal of this international airport. Finally, this paper investigates the capacity of the terminal to handle traffic under different demand scenarios, thus providing useful insight to decision makers. • Strategic and tactile assignment of check-in counters to scheduled flight. • Binary and mixed integer linear programs model to assign flights to counters. • Model validated using real data from an international airport. • Alternative strategies to enhance counters’ assignment processes is proposed. • Changing departure times and number of counters during check-in time windows. • Investigating terminal capacity under different forecasted traffic scenarios.