考慮供給不確定性之航空貨運營收管理

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，尤其在經過美國911事件與SARS風暴後，目前航空貨運之成長幅度已超越航空客運之成長。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，本研究希望能將營收管理應用於航空貨運的艙位規劃上，將有限的艙位妥善使用，以增加航空公司的期望總收益。 由於航空貨運的艙位容量往往會受到多種因素之影響，如航線及氣候等，其供給量並不確定，同時必須處理因而衍生的貨物被拒登機情況。此外，基於航空貨運需求的特性，必須採用適當的隨機序程來模擬訂位需求，以求接近航空貨運業的真實狀況。故本研究以既有研究為基礎，建立航空貨運業艙位之動態規劃模式，使航空公司在面臨需求與供給雙方面之不確定性時，仍能夠經由有效地進行艙位控管配置，達成總收益最大化的目標。 本研究依據台灣地區某航空公司的實際營運與作業資料，對模式進行實例的驗證，並就模式中的二項重要因素「供給不確定性」與「被拒登機補償」進行敏感度分析。由敏感度分析結果發現，當供給相對穩定時，被拒登機補償的提高對於期望總收益之影響有限，但當賠償倍數固定時，供給不確定性的增加對於期望總收益的影響極為顯著。因此，航空公司若欲透過營收管理提高其總收益，應從有效地掌握各航班的艙位供給量開始。

Due to world trade liberalization and global supply chain, air cargo industry has been booming for the past several decades. Particularly, after the 911 tragedy and the outbreak of SARS, the growth rate of air cargo has surpassed that of air passengers. On the other hand, since American Airlines successfully applied revenue management to raise its profit, revenue management has become a common technique in air passenger business. Therefore, this study is aiming to apply the revenue management concept to the planning and control of air cargo space, so the airlines can fully utilize the limited cargo space to increase the expected revenue. However, due to the factors such as route assignment and weather condition of air routes, the supply of air cargo space of a specific flight is uncertain. Meanwhile, denied boarding problems caused by supply uncertainty needs to be addressed carefully. Moreover, to take the real situations into consideration, it is very important to apply an appropriate random process to model the special characteristics of air cargo demand. Based on former studies, this study develops a dynamic programming model to assist the airlines to cope with the uncertainty arising from both the demand side and the supply side. Thus, the airlines can achieve the goal of profit maximization by effective planning and control over the limited cargo space. According to the numerical examples base on the actual operation data of a Taiwan’s international airline, this study verifies the model and performs the sensitivity analysis for two important factors, supply uncertainty and compensation for denied boarding. The sensitivity analysis shows that when supply is quite stable, the expected revenue caused by the increase of the compensation for denied boarding is very limited. However, when the compensation is fixed, the expected revenue is significantly influenced by the increase of supply uncertainty. Therefore, if Airlines want to improve their total revenue, they should start with controlling the capacity of each flight effectively.