Research On Analysis And Control Problems Of Airline Network Stability

As the foundation of airline companies’ flight operations, airline network determines the long-term operation cost directly, and influences airline companies’ survival and development.Improve the stability of airline network and reduce losses caused by instability, which is conducive to enhancing the airline’s development potential and market competitiveness. Stability of airline network is studied systematically in this paper. Firstly, define the relevant concepts of the stability of airline network, then analyze and evaluate the instability, and finally give response measures to control the propagation of instability.(1) Based on complex network transmission dynamics theory, take flight delay as a breakthrough point, establish the delay propagation model, we analyze the effect of topology structure on the stability of airline network. The results show that Hub-and-Spoke Network has good stability, and it also shows the robustness to the random disturbance and the vulnerability to the deliberate attack. When the initial delay occurs in hub airport, the delay propagation is serious.When the initial delay occurs in non-hub airport, the impact is much smaller.(2) Based on the thought of adaptive agent digraph, combine the actual characteristics of the airline network, study on network instability from the perspective of system stability, and do the simulation analysis on network instability under inclement weather. Then propose the indicator of entropy to reflect the stability of the airline network and to measure the uncertainty of system instability. The results show that it is feasible to take entropy as the indicator to reflect the stability during the process of system operation of the airline network. System instability occurs and flights are delayed if the entropy is not zero. When entropy increases, the possibility of flight delay increases, and it is more likely to lead to the propagation of flight delays.(3) According to the influence of topology structure on airline network stability, the flow allocation strategy which is suitable for the airline network with different topologies is studied.When the initial instability occurs in airports with different degrees, select appropriate flow distribution strategy for the three kinds of topology structure of network, to alleviate the effects of system instability. The results show that for Hub-and-Spoke Network and Linear Network, it is suitable to use optimal allocation strategies to improve the stability of the system; for City-to-CityNetwork, it is suitable to use proportional allocation strategy to ensure the stability and to reduce the overflow.(4) Establish the dynamic programming model of flight schedules when instability occurs in peak hours, combined with NSGA-II algorithm which is an effective multi-objective optimization algorithm, adjust the flight schedule timely to deal with airport capacity decrease caused by inclement weather. The results show that it can effectively reduce total delay flights and total delay time by pre-regulation to increase the initiative of airlines dealing with network system instability.In this paper, the stability of airline network is studied from the theoretical level while considering the operational level requirements, and provide a theoretical reference for airline companies to improve the stability of their airline networks.