Research On Airline Network Seat Inventory Control Method

The network seat inventory control in airline revenue management is studied in this dissertation. Revenue management is the hot point of scientific management method and seat inventory control holds core status in airline revenue management. As to the presentation of multi-leg flight and the trend of hub and spoke network in our country, this paper studies network seat inventory control. The main contents of the dissertation are as follows:First, we introduce the development, research contents, application and evolution of revenue management. The models and seat inventory control methods of network revenue management are emphasized. Optimizations of control are different from each other under different situation, so optimizations of control are discussed in detail.Second, as to seat inventory control about multi-leg flight which is ubiquitous in our country, the method which is based on shadow price is set up. The algorithm is given and the example is analyzed in detail.We introduce the shadow price to prorate fares, then the prorated fares were regarded as leg revenue and the EMSR was extended to manage multi-leg seat inventory control problem. The method is simple and feasible and easy to be used in airlines.Third, as to the network seat inventory control problem, the model which is based on network contribution value is set up. The algorithm is given and the example is analyzed to validate this method.When the network of airlines is more complicated than that of multi-leg, no matter multi-leg seat inventory control method or bid price method can't distinguish the network contribution value of different booking requests. We introduce the calculation method of network contribution method and calculate it with ILOG. The algorithm and step of nesting control is also given.