Airline Scheduling and Optimisation

This study set out to examine how research on airline scheduling and optimisation has developed, using a bibliometric review supported by a thematic literature review. Specifically, it aimed to determine how publication output has changed over time, which countries, authors and sources contribute most to the field, which research themes are dominant, niche or emerging, and what gaps and future directions the literature suggests. Following the PRISMA framework (Moher et al., 2010), an initial 2,828 Scopus records were refined by time span, subject area, document type, language and source type to a final dataset of 1,045 journal articles and review papers. These were analysed using RStudio and Biblioshiny and complemented by a VOSviewer cluster analysis of a separate RIS database. The analysis has identified a clear and sustained expansion of research activity. Annual publications rose from 26 articles in 2011 to 113 in 2026, an increase of about 335%, with the highest value of 122 articles recorded in 2025. Average annual output increased from 35.6 articles in 2011–2015 to 58 in 2016–2020 and 95.5 in 2021–2026. This growth was not entirely steady, since declines occurred in several years, including 2015, 2018, 2022, 2024 and 2026. Nevertheless, the overall pattern shows that airline scheduling has become an established and expanding area of scholarly enquiry. The research has also shown that production is geographically concentrated. The country-level data contains 2,147 records across 68 countries, of which China accounts for 639 (about 29.8%) and the United States for 344. Together, these two countries represent about 45.8% of the records, and the top five countries account for approximately 59.9%. The three-field analysis links prominent authors such as Wang Y, Sun X, Chung SH and Zhang Y to keywords including air transportation, optimisation, air traffic control and integer programming. Source production further indicates that the field is spread across aviation-specific and broader operations research outlets. The Journal of Air Transport Management reached approximately 80 cumulative occurrences by 2026, followed by the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management (about 55), Transportation Science (about 37), and the European Journal of Operational Research and Transportation Research Part E (about 30 each).

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