考量網路效應的航空貨運訂艙控管決策

Abstract

在國際貿易自由化與全球供應鏈的發展下，航空貨運在過去數十年蓬勃發展，目前航空貨運業運量成長幅度已超越航空客運業，且預估未來仍將會是穩定成長。此外，自從美國航空公司利用營收管理成功地提高營收後，營收管理於航空客運業已是一項十分普及的技術。有鑑於此，本研究希望將目前已廣泛應用於航空客運業之營收管理觀念，應用至航空貨運業的經營管理與日常作業上，將航空公司有限的貨運艙位有效的規劃與管控，以期提升航空公司貨運收益。 隨著現今航空網路多朝著軸輻式型態發展，單一航段的營收管理模式，已無法符合實務作業面的需求，考量網路效應的多航段營收管理研究也相對的日益重要。因此本研究以考量網路效應的多航段航空貨運之靜態數學營收管理模式，將貨物之重量與材積兩項維度同時考慮，並運用實務數據與經驗，以靜態和動態的模式分別進行數值測試與效益驗證。 由靜態的數值測試可以得出接受訂位的最低運價，可以作為航空公司貨運艙位控管人員決策依據，而動態的效益驗證也發現可以提升約6~15%的營收，確定此一以靜態數學規劃之營收管理模式可用於航空貨運訂艙控管決策，提供航空公司改善目前以人工判斷與經驗法則為依據的貨運艙位控管策略，並達到航空公司提升貨載與貨運營收的目標。

Due to world trade liberalization and global supply chain, air cargo industry has been booming for the past several decades. The growth rate of air cargo has surpassed that of air passengers, and recent forecasts are projecting for this to continue in the future. Since American Airlines’ successful implementation, revenue management (RM) has become a common practice for air passenger business. However, the application of RM to the air cargo industry is still at an early stage. Therefore, this study is aiming to apply RM to the management and daily operations of air cargo industry, for the airlines to fully utilize the limited cargo space and increase cargo revenue. With current hub-and-spoke operation of airlines, the focus of the RM research has shifted from the traditional single-leg version to multi-sector one considering the network effect. Based on former studies, this study develops a static programming model considering network effect and takes the two key dimensions of air cargo, weight and volume, into account. Moreover, this study verifies the model by performing the numerical test for both static and dynamic model validation, and evaluates the benefits based on the actual operational date. The result in the static numerical experiment, the minimum booking acceptance rate, is a good decision support for airline cargo space controller to manage the valuable resource. Besides, it is found that RM shows an average of 6~15% revenue improvement compared with current human judgment in dynamic numerical experiment. It is believed that this study should serve as a good solution for airlines to well-manage the cargo booking and space control, and then to improving cargo loading and increase cargo revenue.