Quantifying revenue and profit impact of retiming flights while taking into consideration non-linear ramifications and constraints

US7725337B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• AMERICAN AIRLINES, INC. · US

Inventors

• Ronald Chu · Palo Alto, US
• Su-Hsia Yang · Irving, US
• Tze-Yun Lin · Irving, US
• Atul Jain · Altadena, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Dec 13, 2007
• Grant date: May 25, 2010
• Expiry date: Dec 21, 2028

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q10/087
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A method, system and computer program product for efficiently quantifying the economic impact of retiming flights without the necessity of implementing the traditional airline forecasting system from scratch. A forecast module computes the difference in impact prior to and after the retiming of a flight. A flight grouping module, using the computed difference in impact, generates a new schedule, which is used by the forecast module to generate new changes in impact, until the schedule converges. A flyable module generates a list of retimed flights based on the converged schedule for resolving operational infeasibilities of the latter. The forecast module generates a profit for each of the retimed flights, which is used by a scheduling module to improve the schedule, which is used by the forecast module to revise the economic impacts for the list of all retimed flights. This process continues until no further economic improvement can be made.