An Airlift Hub-and Spoke Location-Routing Model with Time Windows

Traditionally, the United States Air Force's Air Mobility Command (AMC) has used the concept of direct delivery to airlift cargo and passengers from a point of embarkation to a point of debarkation. While this method of one onload and one offload for each cargo load makes cargo tracking, or in-transit visibility (ITV), easy, and makes deliveries quickly, it appears direct delivery has significant disadvantages in many airlift scenarios. This study develops an alternative military airlift method utilizing concepts from the hub-and-spoke configuration used in the commercial airline industry. The goals of this project are two-fold: to develop an alternative hub-and-spoke combined locationrouting mixed integer programming prototype model, and then to use this model to


determine what advantages a hub-and-spoke system offers, and in which scenarios it is best-suited, when compared to the direct delivery method.