A Column Generation based Heuristic for the Tail Assignment Problem

TL;DR

This paper introduces a parallel column generation heuristic for the tail assignment problem, significantly speeding up solution times for real-world airline instances by integrating constraint programming and variable fixing techniques.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid heuristic combining parallel column generation, constraint programming, and variable fixing to efficiently solve complex tail assignment problems.

Findings

Achieved substantial reduction in resolution time for real airline data

Effectively incorporated maintenance restrictions from aviation regulations

Improved solution integrality through variable fixing heuristic

Abstract

This article proposes an efficient heuristic in accelerating the column generation by parallel resolution of pricing problems for aircrafts in the tail assignment problem (TAP). The approach is able to achieve considerable improvement in resolution time for real life test instances from two major Indian air carriers. The different restrictions on individual aircraft for maintenance routing as per aviation regulatory bodies are considered in this paper. We also present a variable fixing heuristic to improve the integrality of the solution. The hybridization of constraint programming and column generation was substantial in accelerating the resolution process.