A hybrid column generation and constraint programming optimizer for the tail assignment problem

Tail Assignment is the problem of assigning flight legs to aircraft while satisfying all operational constraints, and optimizing some objective function. In this article, we present a hybrid column generation and constraint programming solution approach. This approach can be used to quickly produce solutions for operations management, and also to produce close-to-optimal solutions for long and mid term planning scenarios. We present computational results which illustrate the practical usefulness of the approach