Patent Document ID: 8117055
Application ID: 12171895
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. At least one program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying at least one program of instructions executable by the machine to perform an air cargo yield management method for optimising a yield parameter resulting from assigning an offered capacity offered by a future instance of a cargo flight to each one of a plurality of different categories of requests competing for the capacity, the method comprising: defining the offered capacity by a weight capacity variable and a volume capacity variable, the weight variable and the volume variable independent relative to each other; storing a set of historical profiles for each one of a plurality of previous instances of the cargo flight, the set including a historical profile of an historical value of the weight variable and the volume variable reserved by each category, assigning a probability to each previous instance of the cargo flight, estimating a potential profile of a potential value of the weight variable and the volume variable from each historical profile according to a corresponding current value of the capacity variable reserved by the category for the future instance of the cargo flight and according to a corresponding unconstrained demand of the weight variable and the volume variable for the category in the previous instance of the cargo flight, defining a historical scenario for each previous instance of the cargo flight, the historical scenario including a final potential capacity variable from each corresponding potential profile, the final potential variable comprising a final potential weight capacity variable and a final potential volume capacity variable; determining an authorisation to allocate the offered capacity for the weight variable and the volume variable of each category in the future instance of the cargo flight by applying a stochastic model to the historical scenarios according to the corresponding probabilities; and providing a determination to a display of a computing unit of an acceptance or a rejection of a request for the cargo flight based on the authorization; wherein each historical profile and each potential profile include a plurality of corresponding snapshots of the reserved capacity variable and of the potential capacity variable, respectively, the estimating the potential profile comprising: estimating an opening coefficient for each period comprised between two consecutive snapshots, the opening coefficient being indicative of a percentage of time during which the category was open in the period, calculating an emphasis value for each period as a weighted mean of a gradient in the period of the reserved capacity variable for the category in a subset of the corresponding historical profiles, estimating a potential gradient for each period as a linear interpolation between the gradient, for a first value of the opening coefficient indicative of a complete opening of the category, and the highest between the gradient and the emphasis value, for a second value of the opening coefficient indicative of a complete closure of the category, and constructing the potential profile from a time corresponding to the current time by integrating the potential gradients starting from the corresponding current capacity variable.