Research On Joint Decision Of Airline Flight Schedule Design And Pricing Based On Passenger Choice Behavior

The airline’s flight schedule,which establishes information such departure times and the types of scheduled flights as well as the price level of flights,is created based on flight frequencies and aircraft resources.The differential pricing of parallel flights is a mix of flight features and competitive market factors that assign different prices to different flights and different types of passengers based on their choice behavior,which in turn influences flight schedule planning.Both are essential for airlines to increase the effectiveness of their flying resources and their competitiveness on the market.In practice,flight schedule planning and pricing decisions are made individually and hierarchically,ignoring the interaction and feedback effects between the them.By setting fares after flight product design and planning,it is challenging to fully exploit the beneficial effect of product pricing linkage,and the result is not optimal from flight design to pricing,thus harming the airline’s income.The study themes in this paper are competitive pricing and timetable optimization.To realize the coordinated decision of airlines’ flight schedule design and multi-flight pricing,the paper is undertaken on passengers’ flight selection behavior,differentiated competitive pricing of carriers’ parallel flights,and joint schedule-pricing decision,respectively.The main research contents are as follows:(1)Combining discrete choice model and utility theory to analyze passengers’ flight choice behavior.Taking the flight travel time,departure time,fare,and aircraft type as the factors.with the application of the uniform design method to the combination of flight characteristics attributes to generate a parallel flight questionnaire,and the SP survey was used to collect data on passenger flight preferences.The parameters of the MNL model are calibrated using the great likelihood estimation method to obtain the travel utility functions of various traveler categories.It offers backing for the future study’s computation of the flight-sharing rate.(2)Research on differential competitive pricing of parallel flights based on passengers’ choice behavior.The optimal pricing equilibrium problem of different flights under profit maximization of airlines is studied,A two-oligarch game model for equilibrium pricing of multi-parallel flights is constructed,and a solution algorithm for the model is designed based on the optimal short-sighted response mechanism in game learning theory.The flight competition game is examined empirically to evaluate the model’s validity using the BeijingGuangzhou route market as an example.(3)Joint optimization of flight schedules and pricing under route network structure.A flight schedule-game pricing two-layer planning model is established from the perspective of flight schedule optimization,taking flight frequency and the number of available aircraft as prerequisites.In this model,the upper-layer model solves the issue of flight departure time and aircraft type arrangement,and the lower-layer model finds the equilibrium price corresponding to the flight schedule,with the algorithm of feedback iteration of the upper and lower-layer mode.Finally,an actual examination of a Chinese route network reveals that the method constructed in this paper is able to enhance the revenue and reduce the operating cost of flights while preserving the frequency of transportation and aircraft resource constraints,thus achieving the global optimal decision of flight schedules and pricing.The main innovative work in this paper is:(1)By invoking the idea of experimental program design to design a passenger alternative flight set,the flight preferences of passengers are collected by simulating realistic ticketing scenarios,and the weights of factors influencing passengers’ flight choice behavior are measured,which can scientifically estimate the utility function of civil aviation passengers.(2)The innovative model of differential competitive pricing for parallel flights is constructed for passenger flight choice behavior and airline competition behavior,which can set multi-level fares based on passenger preferences while considering the substitution effect between flights.The optimal myopic response algorithm designed for the model can make this study different from the assumption of perfectly rational participants in traditional studies,which makes the constructed game model have practical application to airlines.(3)By combining flight schedule preparation with flight pricing decision,a new idea of operational decision considering the interaction between the two is proposed.A two-layer planning model is used to realize the optimal solution for the whole process from flight time and aircraft type allocation to flight pricing,and to provide a basis for airlines to improve their revenue while realizing the overall decision of schedule preparation and flight pricing.