Aircraft routing problem considering various maintenance operation factors: A literature review

The companies in the aviation industry require exact scheduling and operation due to their complex and costly activities. The aircraft routing problem (ARP) which meets all of the requirements related to maintenance operations and achieves the minimum costs is among the significant issues for an airline. Solving the ARP includes creating all of the routes and defining aircraft maintenance inspections. The present study aims to review and categorize the recent research on ARP and maintenance operation. To this aim, four significant categories including type of model, maintenance and repair factors, disruption and robustness, as well as objective function and solution approach were defined. Based on the literature review, the integrated study of the airline schedule steps provides better results than the multi-stage review. In addition, defining the combined framework of different maintenance factors generates a more accurate schedule to control the maintenance requirements. Further, applying multiple hybrids meta-heuristic approach leads to significant results.