Air cargo truck scheduling at a major European airline

Air cargo has emerged as an essential pillar in the airline industry and will likely grow even more in the coming decades. Therefore, airlines need to efficiently use their resources to meet the increasing demand in volumes and speed. This study focuses on the export stream of goods, specifically on accepting deliveries at the warehouse just before departure. Most clients’ trucks arrive unevenly distributed over the week. Combined with limited unloading capacity, this results in heavy congestion at peak hours, which is undesirable for the client and the airline. Currently, the airline serves the trucks roughly on a first-come-first-serve basis. However, there is room for improvement in sequencing the trucks - sticking to a traditional policy as first-come-first-serve is not beneficial with such a complex problem. This study proposes a fast heuristic that can balance the average and the spread of the waiting times, two performance measures for a schedule. The results give insight in the relation between both performance measures and enable stakeholders to make a trade-off.