The airline container loading problem with pickup and delivery

This paper considers the loading optimization problem for a set of containers and pallets transported into a cargo aircraft that serves multiple airports. Because of pickup and delivery operations that occur at intermediate airports, this problem is simultaneously a Weight, and Balance Problem and a Sequencing Problem. Our objective is to minimize fuel and handling operation costs. This problem is shown to be NP-hard. We resort to a mixed integer linear program. Based on real-world data from a professional partner (TNT Airways), we perform numerical experiments using a standard B, and C library. This approach yields better solutions than traditional manual planning, which results in substantial cost savings.