Two-stage Airline Fleet Planning Model

Fleet planning is a process of strategic importance for an airline. Airlines have a tendency to match their capacities and passenger demand for corresponding market conditions, which has a direct impact on airline profitability and costs. It is necessary to consider many different factors in order to make a good fleet plan. This paper proposes the sequential two-stage model for fleet planning. The first stage refers to determination of an approximate fleet mix in terms of aircraft size which is obtained by fuzzy logic. The outputs from this stage are two sets of routes: one presenting routes covered by small aircraft and another one presenting routes covered by medium size aircraft. At the same time, these outputs represent inputs for the second stage in which the fleet sizing problem is solved using heuristic procedure. The sequential two-stage model is exemplified with the incumbent airline with its base at Belgrade Airport.