Air-cargo capacity allocation for multiple freight forwarders

Improving demand forecasting in the air cargo handling industry: a case study

“…This strategy allows them to focus and employ their resources in the core competencies that generate their competitive advantage (McIvor, 2008), because the Airlines' core business is not air cargo handling, but air passenger transportation (Amaruchkul & Lorchirachoonkul, 2011;Popescu et al, 2006;Nelms, 1999). Thus, an additional link in an air cargo supply chain that is not considered as such in the literature, is represented by the ACHCs, which are the basis of the case-study in as well as administrative operations such as bookings, documentation, insurance, tracing, etc.…”

“…In fact, the scheduling of manpower to take care of cargo handling operations at air cargo terminals is a huge challenge. Partly, due to the uncertainty of the air cargo industry discussed above (Totamane et al, 2012;Amaruchkul et al, 2011;Wu, 2011;Popescu et al, 2006) and due to the high variations of flight departures and arrivals at airports, along with the fact that staff must be employed in full shifts, regardless of the variable workloads at different hours during the day in conventional air cargo terminals (Rong & Grunow, 2009). …”

“…Other problems arising from sudden staff absence, changes in Airlines' customer demands and deficiencies in the Airlines' operations and processes are outside the control of ACHCs. The nature of air cargo demand is volatile and uncertain (Totamane et al, 2012;Amaruchkul et al, 2011;Wu, 2011;Popescu et al, 2006). Due to the heterogeneity factor in customer demand (Kalchschmidt et al, 2006).…”

“…There are some other authors (Chou et al, 2013;Chen et al, 2012;Suryani et al, 2012) that undertake research towards enhancing the forecasts accuracy of air cargo demand, mainly in the long-run, from a broader macroeconomic perspective, taking into consideration factors such as population, employment rates, incomes per capita, GDP, GNP, economic growth rates, etc. However, the root cause that prevents forecasts from being accurate in this industry, is simply the uncertain and volatile nature of air cargo demand (Totamane et al, 2012;Amaruchkul et al, 2011;Wu, 2011;Popescu et al, 2006). A big proportion of which, is due to the heterogeneity factor in customer demand, as described by Kalchschmidt et al (2006).…”

Optimal solution for a cargo revenue management problem with allotment and spot arrivals

“…Han et al (2010) formulate the problem as a discrete-time Markov chain and derive an optimal bid-price booking control policy. Amaruchkul and Lorchirachoonkul (2011) study the problem of accepting/rejecting allotment requests of multiple forwarders of a single air-cargo carrier. They develop a DP to choose the allotments that maximize the expected total profit, and propose heuristics for solving the problem.…”