On an experimental algorithm for revenue management for cargo airlines

In this paper we present a set of algorithms which represent different implementations of strategies for revenue management for air cargo airlines. The problem is to decide on the acceptance of a booking request given a set of fixed accepted requests and expected further demand. The strategies are based on a planning model for air cargo routing which determines the maximal contribution to profit for the capacities of a given flight schedule. This planning model associates an optimal set of so-called itineraries/paths to the set of possible origin-destination pairs according to given yield values. In mathematical terms the model is the path flow formulation of a special multi-commodity flow problem. This model is solved by intelligently applying column generation.