Long-term planning of an air transportation network : an optimization approach

International audience In this communication is considered the problem of long term forecasting of an air transportation network. This problem is crucial when planning the necessary investments in airports, fleets and air traffic control resources. The proposed approach makes use of two different optimization models: one model is devoted to demand forecasting while the other one optimizes the air transport supply according with a profit maximization behaviour for the whole sector. The demand forecasting process makes use of an entropy maximization approach to determine origin-destination matrices for a given scenario. The supply optimization model considers simultaneously two classes of flows: aircraft flows providing air transportation capacity and passengers flows generating revenues to the airlines operators. No classical flows in networks optimization technique is available to solve this problem while two level solution techniques considering aircraft flows at the first level and passengers flows at the other can be considered. A proposed solution scheme is composed of an iterative process between the current solutions of the demand and the supply optimization problems: the entropy maximizing problem provides the passengers origin-destination matrix given a fare structure, while the supply optimization problem provides the fare structure given a passengers origin-destination matrix. The problem is illustrated in the case of West Africa.