PhD Airline Operations Mixed Fleets of Novel Aircraft: From Network Development to Scheduling

Challenge:
How to deploy sustainable aircraft in an airline network?

Change:
Develop airline decision models for novel aircraft
Impact:
Insights into how to integrate new tech into networks

The goals for future aviation are ambitious; on a global scale, air traffic is expected to continue growing in the foreseeable future. At the same time, we urgently have to reduce the climate impact of the aviation industry. To achieve this, aircraft concepts are studied with novel energy carriers such as batteries and hydrogen. These novel powertrains lead to different flight performance, payload and range capabilities, and airport needs.

Airlines will soon have to make the strategic decisions about their future networks and fleet composition to make their operations more sustainable: which aircraft to operate, when to introduce them, where to fly to, and how frequently. At the same time, these novel aircraft concepts may lead to different tactical decisions about the schedule, such as where to charge or which speed to fly at.

All these decisions are taken with an eye on reducing climate impact, while the economic and operational penalties have to be kept to a minimum.

Your unique challenge as a PhD candidate at TU Delft is to address the following question: how can we support future airline decision making to introduce mixed fleets of more sustainable aircraft technologies? We want to support airlines, OEMs, and other stakeholders to make effective choices for introducing novel aircraft through advanced methods and making the results interpretable.

You will develop mathematical models and computational tools to look decades ahead and perform strategic airline planning, while considering the impact novel aircraft may have at tactical and operational levels, and vice versa. In addition, your models will be coupled to other tools to capture all aspects of the changing aviation ecosystem. Therefore, an efficient computational setup is key. You will build upon existing research and collaborate with colleagues in our section studying future operations of sustainable energies.

During the PhD project, you will be involved in the Dutch DASAL project, together with other PhD candidates at the faculty. Your main activity in this project will be modelling of airline operations for aircraft with novel energy carriers. You will work closely together with other experts involved in this project, at TU Delft and the Dutch Royal Aerospace Institute NLR, to receive inputs on aircraft design and flight performance, and you will provide fleet and flight schedule outputs to other disciplines.

You will, of course, be writing papers and attending conferences. In addition, you will supervise labs and coach master students during their graduation research under the flag of the Operations and Environment section. Who are your fellow team members? We are an interdisciplinary and internationally diverse group of some 30 driven assistant and associate professors, lecturers, project managers, PhD candidates, and postdocs.

We share the ambition to develop models and tools in which we accumulate our expertise to enable future adaptive and sustainable air transport operations. Fostering an open, friendly, and collaborative atmosphere in which people are approachable, we share knowledge, help each other, and meet socially. And you will get all the support and training you need to evolve and grow as a researcher.

Learn more about the Operations and Environment section here.

Contributing to the introduction and operations the future of sustainable aircraft technologies. That’s the drive you share with us. You put your analytical skills to good use, creating mathematical models and translating them into optimisation algorithms and programs. You work well both independently and in collaboration with academic researchers and industrial stakeholders, for which you harness your communication skills. And you enjoy coaching master students, while developing your own skills and competencies.

You also have:

• An MSc in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Operations Research, Transportation Engineering, or another…