Patent ID: 7725337

Claim:
A method for quantifying the revenue and profit impact of retiming flights, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a flight schedule for a plurality of airlines; receiving a new departure time and a new arrival time for a retimed flight; determining a set of existing origin-destination itineraries that can still be served by said retimed flight; determining a set of existing origin-destination itineraries that can no longer be served by said retimed flight; determining a set of new origin-destination itineraries that can now be served by said retimed flight; computing, by a processor, a total demand revenue in each active origin-destination market without said retimed flight, wherein said active origin-destination market corresponds to said set of existing origin-destination itineraries that can still be served by said retimed flight, said set of existing origin-destination itineraries that cannot be served by said retimed flight, and said set of new origin-destination itineraries that can now be served by said retimed flight; computing a quality of service value for itineraries that can be served by said retimed flight, wherein said quality of service value corresponds to a value proportional to a quality of service of a flight; discarding itineraries corresponding to quality of service values below a threshold; storing itineraries corresponding to quality of service values above said threshold, wherein said stored itineraries form a new set of origin-destination itineraries using said retimed flight; computing a total demand revenue using said new set of origin-destination itineraries using said retimed flight; and computing, by a processor, a difference between said computed total demand revenue in each active origin-destination market without said retimed flight and said computed total demand revenue using said new set of origin-destination itineraries using said retimed flight.