The future of airline revenue management

There have been numerous papers written on the topic of airline revenue management (RM) over the past two decades. From its beginnings in the late 1970s to the early 1980s and right up to the present day, much of this work has focused on the conventional fare structures and distribution channels that have been in place since the deregulation of the airline industry in the United States. Many techniques have been used to construct RM models. These have included decision analysis, linear programming, bi-level programming, dynamic programming, game theory, graph theory and many others. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss the various techniques used to implement RM but rather to focus on some of the developments in the airline industry that we believe will have a significant impact on the theory and practice of RM in the future.