Optimizing the routing and scheduling of airside belly cargo transportation

Abstract

Airside cargo transportation is a critical component of the air cargo supply chain, requiring timing and coor dination to minimize operational costs and ensure high service quality for the airline transporting the cargo. The Airside Cargo Transportation Problem (ACTP) addresses the efficient routing and scheduling of cargo vehicles carrying ULDs across the airport’s service roads between the cargo terminal and passenger aircraft stands while adhering to operational and safety requirements. Key aspects of the ACTP include vehicle ca pacity utilization, differentiation between cargo commodities, and the consideration of time-dependent travel times. This paper presents a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation of the ACTP as a Set Partitioning Problem. The sets cover all possible consolidations of various cargo transportation requests on paths generated using preprocessing algorithms. The ACTP is computationally feasible by applying a rolling horizon-based heuristic. The model is applied to a case study at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AAS) after a potential relocation of KLM Cargo’s terminal. This relocation provides a unique opportunity to evaluate various strategies to optimize airside cargo transportation and study the implications for both KLM Cargo and AAS. Two strategies were evaluated to optimize network capacity: one focusing on spatial distribu tion and the other on time distribution by using traffic predictions. While the spatial distribution strategy degrades the overall performance, the traffic prediction strategy resulted in poor solution quality due to increased model complexity. Accordingly, it could not be proven that its results are comparable to those of other strategies. In addition, two strategies examined the impact of different cargo terminal operational concepts on cargo transportation. The pull strategy, which schedules cargo to arrive at the aircraft stand just in time for loading, improved overall airside cargo transportation performance. In contrast, the push strategy, which transports cargo immediately after processing at the cargo terminal, resulted in a decline in overall airside cargo transportation performance.