Survey Paper—Airline Yield Management An Overview of Seat Inventory Control

The seat inventory control component of airline yield management is examined, with an emphasis on the practical aspects of the problem. A survey of current airline practice indicates that seat inventory control is dependent on human judgment rather than systematic analysis. Past work on the development of mathematical methods in this area has focused on large-scale optimization models and simplified representations of the problem. There remains a need for practical solution approaches that incorporate quantitative decision tools.