A Multi-commodity Flow Approach for Aircraft Routing and

Maintenance Problem
Chawalit Jeenanuntaa, Boontariga Kasemsontitum, Tawinan Noichawee
Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology,
Thammasat University, Pathumthani 12000, Thailand
a
E-mail: chawalit@siit.tu.ac.th

Abstract Aircraft routing and maintenance scheduling

is a large-scaled and complex optimization undertaking that
assigns an aircraft of each fleet type to each flight whilst
satisfying maintenance regulations, shifts time of workers
and other requirements. This paper presents the aircraft
routing and maintenance scheduling problem for both
international flights and domestic flights of Thai Airways
with the major focus on minimizing the total waiting time for
maintenance checks in order to reduce expense. The various
test cases are generated from Thai Airways data set and
solved by using the commercial optimizer, IBM ILOG
CPLEX.

Keywords aircraft routing, maintenance scheduling,

multi-commodity flow problem

I. INTRODUCTION

Airline scheduling presents the overall planning
for an airline which matches the availability of resources
to the demand. The problem is the assignment of the exact
aircraft to the schedule, the interrelated maintenance for
each aircraft, and the assignment of cabin crews and
cockpit. Effective scheduling affects the revenues of
airlines and as a result attracts more passengers.
The airline business processes can be divided into
two parts, the first part is planning optimization which
consists of flight scheduling, fleet assignment, aircraft
routing, and crew scheduling. This phase involves long
term planning which is used in the preparation of
operations. The second part is the operation and
dispatching optimization phase. It is short term planning
which aims to manage the business. The process can be
illustrated as in Fig 1.
A. Flight Scheduling
Scheduling is matching demand of clients with many
factors such as availability of aircraft, characteristic of
operations, manpower, regulations, and business cost. The
larger number of airports and flight frequencies, the more
complex the airline network.
B. Fleet Assignment
Fleet assignment is formulated as a multi-
commodity network problem in which each node is
Fig. 1: The planned schedule of airline business
attributed represented by demand and supply to satisfy a
diverse fleet. The objective is to minimize the total cost or
maximize net profit by assigning the most appropriate
fleet type to each flight leg.
C. Aircraft routing with maintenance
When maximizing the revenue from through flights,
aircraft maintenance routing consists of deciding the
journey of each aircraft. An aircraft should periodically
visit maintenance stations in order to undertake
maintenance as dictated by regulations. The objective of
maintenance routing is to minimize the costs of
maintenance, because the passengers on through flights do
not need to transfer gates to make a connection and avoid
the possibility of irritants such as misrouted baggage.
We planned to construct a month planning horizon cyclic
schedule for a heterogeneous fleet of aircraft. The
maintenance checks on aircraft are to be scheduled based
on the real data flight, which consists of a series of flight
legs carried out by an aircraft. Thus, the maintenance
scheduling problem will be solved after the aircraft are
assigned to the flight legs. The penalizing assignment of
an inappropriate aircraft to the flight leg will create the
cost, so we have to design the schedule that suitable to the
demands of customers.

978-1-4577-0628-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 150

 Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE ICQR
Most of the maintenance checks are done during the
night. Consequently, this paper considers day time and
night time checks for each day in a month-long cyclic
schedule. All maintenance meets with the requirements of
the Department of Civil Aviation regulations relating to
the establishment of this repair station.
D. Crew Scheduling
Crew scheduling consists of deciding the flight
schedules of the crew. This is done according to their
qualifications in flying certain types of fleets (aircraft type
rating), respecting to labor and contractual rules, and
minimizing crew expenses. Crew expenses are wages and
overnight costs while away from their crew base.
This paper focuses on a segment of maintenance
scheduling for Thai Airways and organized in the
following fashion;
Section 1 is an introduction, presenting the overview
of problems faced in the airline scheduling process.
Section 2 describes rotation and maintenance scheduling.
The review of network flow model for aircraft routing and
maintenance is presented in section 3. Section 4 describes
Thai Airways aircraft routing and maintenance
scheduling problems and presents a corresponding multi-
commodity network model. Section 5 reports the results of
a computational test on real data of Thai Airways. Finally,
section 6 provides conclusions.
II. ROTATION AND MAINTENANCE
The frequency of these maintenance checks depends
on the combination of flight hours and number of take-off
and landing cycles, and may be performed at any site
appropriately equipped. Because each aircraft type has
different inventory requirements, little savings can be
achieved by combining facilities for different fleets as
Thai Airways is provided at Thailand based airports.
To be in compliance with the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) constraints, there are four major
checks. These checks vary in scope, duration, and
frequency (Clarke et al. [1]). Nevertheless, Thai Airways
divides the checking into two categories which are line
and light maintenance as follows;
A. Type A and Type B check (Light maintenance)
The first major check (denoted as Type A), the FAA
requires maintenance to occur every 65 flight-hours or
about once a week. Type A checks involve inspection of
all major systems such as landing gear, engines and
control surfaces.
Type B checks are performed every 300 to 600 flight
hours, and require a thorough visual inspection plus
lubrication of all moving parts.
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B. Type C and Type D check (Line Maintenance)
The major checks designated as Type C and D are
completed about once every one to four years, respectively,
and require taking the aircraft out of service for up to a
month at a time.
Because Type C and D checks are spaced at relatively
large intervals and because of the dynamic nature of the
market, these two checks need not be taken into account in
maintenance scheduling.
III. NETWORK FLOW MODEL FOR AIRCRAFT
ROUTING AND MAINTENANCE
During past few decades, there have been many
researches on the problem of maintenance scheduling.
Traditionally, aircraft routing and maintenance scheduling
is solved by a time-space network, integer programming, a
set covering problem or a set partitioning problem, and
many heuristics.
Hane and Barnhart [2] and Barnhart and Talluri [3],
use a time-space network to solve fleet assignment
problems where the time-space network characteristic
must satisfy balance constraints and force aircraft to flow
through the network. The balance is enforced by flow
conversation equations for a time-expand multi-
commodity network. They use time line to force a solution
as a circulation network.
Kabani and Patty [4] begin to use a set partitioning
model for the problem of aircraft routing but they do not
considered maintenance constraints.
Clarke et al. [1] and Feo and Bard [5], worked on
aircraft routing and begin to apply the scheduling of
maintenance operations and of aircraft to be considered
simultaneously using an heuristic approach.
Daskin and Panayotopoulos [6], formulate a route
selection problem to maximize profits in a single hub-and-
spoke network as a mixed-integer linear programming
(MILP.).
Chen, Holle, et al. [7], study network models applied
to two aircraft routing problems, one in which the goal is
to route strike aircraft to a target and back so as to
minimize losses. The aim is a joint routing model to find a
required number of time disjoint routes in a network that
minimizes the total cost. The authors show joint routing
can be model as a dynamic network flow problem.
Gopalan and Talluri [8], propose the use of network
flow and swapping algorithms for network and Eulerian
graphs, involving concepts, such as: fleet assignment,
maintenance opportunities and flight numbering, which
are taken into consideration when making flight schedule
decisions.
Barnhart and Boland [9], use a string base model with
branch and price method for fleet assignment and aircraft
routing problems. The objective is to minimize cost
including maintenance and losing spilled passenger costs.
 Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE ICQR
Desaulniers, et al. [10], consider daily aircraft routing
and scheduling problems. The two models for this is a set
partitioning type formulation and a time constrained
multi-commodity network flow formulation. Then, a
Dantzig Wolfe decomposition approach is used to solve
the linear relaxation.
Sriram and Haghani [11], generate a heuristic method
in solving the IP formulation by CPLEX. The problem
constructs a seven day planning horizon cyclic schedule
with maintenance constraints for a varied fleet of aircraft;
mainly for Type B maintenance checks. Their objective is
to minimize maintenance costs.
Roberts and Escudero [12], create a set of
maintenance jobs to be processed over a fix time. They
brake down skills particularly required for each job. The
overall problem is formulated by integer programming to
schedule and minimize personnel idle time.
Higgins [13], formulate railway maintenance crew
workers multi-skill availability as an integer programming
mathematical model and tabu search method.
Barnhart, Koepke, Armacost [14], extend the integer
programming formulation to solve the ground holding
problem of aircraft networks. The solution proposes
delays to certain aircraft on the ground to minimize the
effects of system disruptions while taking account the
mission priorities of the aircraft.
Safaei, Banjevic and Jardine [15], use a network flow
structure to simulate the mixed-integer mathematical
programming model to formulate an adequate
maintenance schedule. Their constraints are resources and
a skilled workforce to complete the mission. In addition,
they use a Branch-and-Bound method to solve the model
and its performance can prove and evaluate the real data
problem.
IV. THAI AIRWAYS AIRCRAFT ROUTING AND
MAINTENANCE WITH MULTI-COMMODITY
NETWORK MODEL
The principal concern in this paper is focus on Thai
Airways case, which mandated the regulation to wrap up
these two A and B types and called them as Type A
checks. The requirements are set to have Type A checks
every 800 flight-hours or once a month.
In general, the airline made the schedule manually
based on experience and practical knowledge. The planner
constructs a maintenance schedule following traffic
information program, which shows the arrival and
departure time, break time, flight number, origin and
destination for every aircraft and fleet type as timetabled
in one week. Thus, the manager can get a picture of each
aircraft and if the flight-hour is reached and time is
available, the aircraft will be held for checks. Type A
checks take 12 hours. Thus, the aircraft have to stay on
ground more than 12 hours. There are exceptional
circumstances, inspections and repairs take place day and
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night.
This paper proposes a multi-commodity network flow
model for solving aircraft routing and maintenance with
the requirements and test data from Thai Airways. The
objective is to minimize the ground waiting time for
maintenance checks which can be assumed to be a loss for
the airline. A maximum of five aircraft for type A checks
can held at the home base. There are two 12-hour shifts
where the first shift begins at 0:00 am until 12:00 pm and
then the second shift continues again from 12:00 pm until
0:00 am. The type A check begins at the start of each shift
at Suvarnabhumi International Airport as a home
maintenance base in Bangkok, Thailand. The test data
considers both domestic and international flights for three
fleet types.
A. The multi-commodity network flow
First, the time-space network is constructed for each
fleet type where each node represents the time and
location or airport. The arcs can be two types; ground arc
and flight arc. The ground arc connects two nodes on the
same location with the adjacent time. The flight arc
represents the flight leg connecting two nodes with
different locations.
The time-space network is adapted for this aircrafts
routing and maintenance scheduling using the multi-
commodity network flow model. The prescription can be
formulated on a directed graph G= (N, A), where N is the
set of nodes and A is the set of arcs.
The network representing the aircraft flows through
the connection network according to each aircraft type.
Thus, there are different networks for each fleet type.
Fig. 2 shows an example of the multi-commodity network
flow model, which represents dimensions of time and
space possible scheduling for two days in a network of
three cities. There are nodes and arcs components.
A node represents a flight proceeding on a station
which can be arrivals and departures at a specific time. To
ensure the circulation of fleet routing across consecutive
cycles, the time line is continued from the end, for each
station, back to the beginning.
An arc represents an activity, for example, a flight, a
ground-holding, an overnight stay, etc. There are five
types of arcs used which are defined below.
1) Flight arc. A flight arc represents a one-stop flight.
Each flight arc contains information about the departure
time, departure airport, arrival time, arrival airport, and
operating cost. The turn-around time for a non-stop flight
is calculated from the time when the airplane is finished
preparing for the next flight. The arc flow upper bound is
one, meaning that the flight can be served at most once.
The lower bound arc is one, meaning we require to have at
least one aircraft for this flight.
2) Ground arc: A ground arc represents the holding of
airplanes at an airport. The arc cost can include airport tax,
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airport holding charge, gate use charge, etc., The arc flow B. Notation
upper bound is large or infinity capacity, representing the
maximum number of airplanes that can be held at this The following variables are used in the model:
airport during a specific time window. The arc flow lower
bound is zero, meaning that no airplanes are necessarily is the parameter represent total waiting time
held at this airport in this time window. assigned to aircraft for maintenance check.
3) Maintenance arc: A holding arc represents aircrafts
checked on the ground. In this paper, there are two is a binary decision variable of an aircraft a
maintenance arcs per day. It is divided as shifts of flow for arc (i, j)
mechanical engineers in12 hours. The first arc begins at
0:00 am and ends at 12:00 pm. Then, continues again MA is the set of maintenance arcs.
from 12:00 pm to 0:00 am. The time window is set for
two consecutive days as test data. The arc cost is cost for a is an aircraft.

Fig. 2: The aircraft routing and maintenance scheduling

an airplane held at the airport. The arc flow upper bound is N is the set of nodes.
limited to not exceed five aircraft. The lower bound is
zero to represent that sometime no airplanes are necessary A is the set of arcs.
to hold the maintenance at this time window.
4) Waiting arc: This arc represents the time of the AC is the set of aircraft.
aircraft on the ground waiting for maintenance. The arcs
parameters are the same as the ground arc. is the lower bound for arc (i, j).
5) Finished arc: It connects the end time of
maintenance arc to the next time of flight. The arcs is the upper bound for arc (i, j).
parameters are the same as the maintenance arc.
The formulation of the problem of aircraft and C. Model
maintenance scheduling is presented in this section. First
we will introduce the notation that is followed by the The multi-commodity flow model is given by:
formulation.
Minimize , (1)

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Subject to instances. In contrast, the result of waiting time is totally

, , 0 ,
(2)
5 , (3)
, (4)
The objective (1) of this model is to minimize the
waiting time of each aircraft that have to undergo
maintenance checks as evenly as possible while satisfying
the set of constraints, which can be explained as follows.
Flow Conservation Constraints (2) state that the
amount of flow into and out of each node i must be equal
for each aircraft. Maintenance Requirement Constraints (3)
ensure that each aircraft needs to undergo maintenance
checks at least once a month. Arc Capacity Constraints (4)
demonstrate the minimum number and maximum number
of aircraft required for each arc.
5395 minutes, which is less than otherwise.
The fleet type of B772 has 9 aircraft and 10 flights
flow through seven cities. The result is 7110 minutes for
total waiting to undergo maintenance.
Finally, the A346 fleet type is shown a total waiting
time of 11725 minutes, which is the longer one between
these three instances. This fleet type has least number of
aircraft and cities. The number of flights is ten.
For the computation time, the A346 takes 53 seconds,
which is the longest time. Follow by B772 in 19 seconds.
The last one and the shortest time one is A333, takes 13
seconds.
The results show that the proposed model is efficient
and provides a good solution suitable for aircraft routing
and maintenance. For future work, more testing data will
be created to test for the efficiency of the model and
compare solution quality.
VI. CONCLUSION

V. RESULT AND DISCUSSION In this paper, we have studied the multi-commodity

flow model for solving the Thai Airways aircraft routing
We performed a small case study using data from both and maintenance scheduling problem that minimizes the
international flights and domestic flights of Thai total wait time of three fleet types. The main objective in
Airways. There are three desired fleet types,A330-300, aircraft routing is to design the journey of each aircraft
B777-200 and A340-600, using code A333, B772, A346 and occasionally visit maintenance stations with the
respectively. The multi-commodity flow problem is solved purpose of meeting Thai Airways regulations. In our case
by using IBM ILOG CPLEX 12.10. study, we focused on type A maintenance scheduling.
We studied three instances of the problem. The The proposed model was tested for solution on three
instances are varied by number of aircraft, number of instances. The network structure of aircraft routing and
flights using two days operation as shown in Table 1. maintenance scheduling is generate for each instance and
the problem is solved by using IBM ILOG CPLEX 12.10.
TABLE I The results show that the total wait time varied greatly on
INSTANCES DETAILS AND SOLUTIONS each instance; it is the result from the limitation of number
of aircraft checked at the maintenance base during a shift
Instances time.
Instances details
A333 B772 A346 Furthermore, this case considered the MIP model in
Number of aircraft 15 9 6 which CPLEX is used to provide a solution. It is well
Number of flights 22 10 10 known that MIP is inadequate to solve large problems.
Number of cities 11 7 6 Nevertheless, we used a network flow model which is able
Number of days 2 2 2 to solve problems faster than the MIP model.
Number of nodes 94 88 49 In addition, we have expanded the problem to a larger
Number of arcs 154 148 78 scale. The aim is to prove the effectiveness of our model.
Number of variables 463 1333 2516
Number of constraints 377 949 1626 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Optimal solution

Min waiting time (min) 5395 7110 11725 The authors would like to express gratefulness to staff
Computational time (sec) 13 19 53 at the Thai Airways for revealing operating, flight data and
maintenance information.
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