Model-based analysis of maintainance-induced availability of aircrafts in an airline network

Abstract

Optimized aircraft maintenance concepts usually aim at increasing the aircraft availability and reducing costs. The goal of this thesis is to provide a model that quantifies the effect of this increased aircraft availability when applying different maintenance concepts on an entire airline fleet. The chosen measure for the effect on an airline network is the number of revenue flights. This results in solving the tail assignment problem, in which aircraft are assigned to a beforehand planned flight schedule. An agent-based approach for solving the tail assignment is suggested: The single aircraft with their maintenance tasks are dynamically assigned to the flight schedule. Applying the model to different airlines revealed that the usage profile of single aircraft in the fleet, the overall simulated number of revenue flights and average ground times are very similar to what can be observed in real operational airline data. Therefore, the studies provide a framework for further model development in this field. One major advantage of the presented methodology is that constraints for specific aircraft tails can be added easily. This is potentially of interest when testing new maintenance concept that are more focused on optimizing maintenance for single aircraft, by e.g. a stronger dependency on aircraft usage and findings.