An integrated method for fleet assignment and scheduling (flight assignment)

With the help of developing computer applications in air transportation studies are increasing on integrating fleet planning and scheduling levels.Recent developments are on dual integration like fleet assignment and maintenance routing. Although scheduling is the most important phase of the planning the studies are restricted with improving current schemes.Flight assignment is a methodology developed to solve the integrated problem for fleet assignment, maintenance routing, and scheduling altogether. Crew pairing can also be integrated in this method and by this way a complete integration methodology for scheduling planning process can be developed.In the study first given daily demands are tested on the methodology and secondly the demand in a day distributed hourly is tested on the methodology.From the results of the study it can be concluded that, with three different fleet types, flight assignment method is a practical system and this method can solve the problems for different demand conditions.The decision process also simplified from the operator?s point of view. Different ordering can be established for different situations and decision variables, so the decision makers can have a new tool.