Multi-Stage Formation Flight Planning

This thesis investigates the concept of fuel-reduction via formation flight of long-haul commercial aircraft on a network-wide scale, particularly addressing the issue of combinatorial complexity in global formation routing and allocation. A multi-stage formation flight planning (MS-FFLIP) tool is proposed as a computationally tractable approach...

Modelling Network Contribution Under Changing Capacity For A Hub & Spoke Carrier

The main characteristic of a hub-and-spoke network is that many passengers will reach their final destination via a connection at the hub, instead of a direct flight in case of a point-to-point network. An airline operating such a hub-and-spoke network thus has a significant ratio of transfer passengers on its flights. This means that each...

Robust fleet planning under stochastic demand

The research objective of this thesis is to develop an innovative airline fleet planning concept that is capable to consider the long-term stochastic nature of air travel demand while generating meaningful results in reasonable computation times. The proposed methodology aims to identify robust fleets, in terms of profit generating capability...

Inclusion of noise-related constraints in departure procedure optimization

The ever-increasing use of aircraft, together with the on-going urbanization causes increasing noise nuisance due to aviation. This is attenuated by the positioning of airports close to densely populated areas. For this reason the majority of the large airports in the world indicate that noise is one of the limiting factors in the expansion of...

A Low Emissions Taxi Movement Planning Tool

The goal of this research project was to develop and test an online, automated taxi movement planning tool, that optimizes the timed taxiing routes of all aircraft on an airport, by minimizing the impact on the environment. Automatic taxi planning tools have been developed before, but the emissions have never been included before as a factor in...

Heliport Gorinchem - Designing an Aerial Logistic Network

The Dutch city of Gorinchem has great economic growth opportunities for the future, but is limited by its transport system. It is strategically located at a crossroad of two motorways and two rivers, the Boven-Merwede and the Linge. Gorinchem is home to a number of multinationals, among others Damen Shipyards and Van Oord. This sets the right...

Stochastic simulation of delay propagation: Improving schedule stability at Kenya Airways

A large challenge for passenger airlines is the design of a profitable flight schedule, for example at Kenya Airways who operates a highly connected hub-and-spoke network. The goal of this research is create a fundamental insight into the stochastic nature of delay propagation in a passenger hub-and-spoke network which allows airlines to...