The paper provides analytical evidence of the added-value of flexibility for air transportation systems. More specifically, the impact of a new innovative modular aircraft on the operations of an airline is deeply analyzed. The impact analysis is carried out with an integrated schedule planning model which presents a combination of appropriate optimization and behavioral modeling methodologies. The results show that the flexible system uses the transportation capacity more efficiently by carrying more passengers with less overall capacity. Moreover, it is observed that the flexible system deals better with insufficient transportation capacity. Furthermore, the scheduling decisions are robust to the estimated cost figures of the new system. For the analyzed range of costs, it is always carrying more passengers with less allocated capacity compared to a standard system.@en

In airline schedule planning models, the demand and price information are usually taken as inputs to the model. Therefore, schedule and capacity decisions are taken separately from pricing decisions. In this article, we present an integrated scheduling, fleeting, and pricing model for a single airline where these decisions are taken simultaneously. This integration enables to explicitly model supply and demand interactions and make superior decisions. The model refers to a monopolized market. However, competing airlines are included in the model as a reference for the pricing decisions. The pricing decision is formulated through an itinerary choice model which determines the demand of the alternative itineraries in the same market according to their price, travel time, number of stops, and the departure time of the day. The demand model is estimated based on real data and is developed separately for economy and business classes. The seat allocation for these classes is optimized according to the behavior of the demand. The choice model is also used to appropriately model the spill and recapture effects. The resulting model is evaluated with different illustrations and the added value of the integrated approach is analyzed compared to a sequential approach. Results over a set of representative instances show that the integrated model is able to make superior decisions by jointly adjusting capacity and pricing.@en