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 & 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&C library. This approach
yields better solutions than traditional manual planning, which results in substantial cost
savings.