An Integer Programming model for air transport of hazardous and special shipments

The aircraft loading problem is a real-world combinatorial optimisation problem
highly constrained. This weight must be distributed to keep the centre of gravity
within speci ed limits. Moreover, an aircraft has usually several cargo compart-
ments with speci c contours and structural limitations such as
oor loading, com-
bined load limits and cumulative load limitations. Finally, some shipments are par-
ticularly restrictive to transport, like dangerous goods, live animals and perishable
goods. This paper is concerned with the incorporation of these latter constraints
in a mixed integer linear program for the problem of loading a set of Unit Load-
ing Devices and bulk into an aircraft. Experimental results show that our method
achieves optimal solutions within only few seconds.