A Column Generation based Heuristic for the Tail Assignment Problem

This article proposes an efficient heuristic in accelerating the column generation by parallel resolution of pricing problems for aircrafts in the tail assignment problem (TAP). The approach is able to achieve considerable improvement in resolution time for real life test instances from two major Indian air carriers. The different restrictions on individual aircraft for maintenance routing as per aviation regulatory bodies are considered in this paper. We also present a variable fixing heuristic to improve the integrality of the solution. The hybridization of constraint programming and column generation was substantial in accelerating the resolution process.