Setting the right fares is a key lever for increasing operating profitability in the airline industry. It is crucial to design fares that are both appealing to passengers and contribute to an increase in airline revenue. Although airline revenue management techniques have evolved to capture customer-choice behavior, the pricing and allocation decisions continue to be taken independently. However, since they are linked, a single optimization model can address this shortcoming. This paper presents a joint optimization model (JOM) that considers product prices and their allocation quantities as decision variables. A sequential optimization technique that divides the model into two decision problems is adopted to cope with JOM’s complexity. The problem is divided into a master problem and a sub-problem, wherein product price changes are made in the master problem and, with these fixed prices, optimization is performed in the sub-problem. The sub-problem is solved by simplifying the non-linear JOM into a linear programming problem. The direction of product price changes in the master problem is identified using price elasticity of demand. A heuristic based on this concept is proposed and tested. The Elasticity-integrated Pricing and Allocation Heuristic (EPAH) is observed to produce a consistent increase in existing revenues.

制定正确的票价是提高航空业运营利润的关键杠杆。设计既能吸引乘客又能有助于增加航空公司收入的票价至关重要。尽管航空公司的收益管理技术已经发展到能够捕捉客户的选择行为，但定价和分配决策仍然是独立做出的。然而，由于它们是相互关联的，因此单个优化模型可以解决这个缺点。本文提出了一种联合优化模型（JOM），该模型将产品价格及其分配数量视为决策变量。采用将模型分为两个决策问题的顺序优化技术来应对 JOM 的复杂性。该问题分为主问题和子问题，其中在主问题中进行产品价格变化，并利用这些固定价格在子问题中进行优化。通过将非线性JOM简化为线性规划问题来解决子问题。主问题中产品价格变化的方向是利用需求价格弹性来确定的。提出并测试了基于此概念的启发式方法。据观察，弹性集成定价和分配启发式 (EPAH) 可以使现有收入持续增长。