Combat to utilize unused baggage space for air cargo transportation: Importance of synchronizing human and autonomous delivery vehicles☆

Sai-Ho Chung, Qing Zhang, Hoi-Lam Ma and Yige Sun

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2025, vol. 202, issue C

Abstract: Although baggage fees are conventionally included in the ticket prices of legacy airlines, passengers do not often fully utilise all purchased baggage allowance. This surplus capacity presents an opportunity for air cargo transportation; however, the challenge lies in the short notice of the available volume. Therefore, it is crucial to efficiently re-optimise cargos-to-flights allocation while simultaneously coordinating workers to upload the reallocated air cargo on to autonomous delivery vehicles (ADVs) for delivery to flights. However, prior literature ignores human fatigue, which can adversely affect operational efficiency because of declined physical performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that proposes an integrated model that addresses both cargos-to-flights allocation and human-ADV scheduling by utilising a tailored simulated annealing enabled math-heuristic algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that neglecting human fatigue can lead to infeasible solutions, resulting in severe flight delay and low ADV utilization.

Keywords: Air cargo; Unused baggage space; Airline operations; Air passenger flight (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2025.104289

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