Title: Unit load device reassignment following temporary airport closures

Authors: Chun-Ying Chen; Paul Schonfeld

Addresses: Department of Transportation Management, Tamkang University, Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 251301, Taiwan ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA

Abstract: In this study, a reassignment model is developed for helping airline planners in reassigning unit load devices (ULDs), which include containers and pallets, to flights after temporary airport closures. The objective of the model is to minimise the system cost, which includes total weighted delay time and the total penalty for leftover ULDs. To test the model's efficiency and applicability, several problem instances of different scales are randomly generated based upon data from an airline in Taiwan. The sensitivity of results is analysed. The results show that as weight capacity increases, more ULDs can be assigned and average ULD delays increase. The approved ULD's quantity per flight increases, while the number of un-assigned ULD and average ULD delay time may decrease. Also, as the ULD weight increases, fewer ULDs can be assigned, and average ULD delay time may increase. The results show the usefulness of the proposed model for actual operations.

Keywords: containers; air cargo; air freight reassignment; service recovery; ULD reassignment; airport closure; mathematical programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2022.10051950

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2022 Vol.15 No.3/4, pp.239 - 255

Accepted: 25 Apr 2021
Published online: 14 Nov 2022 *

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