Optimization of Indonesia's Pioneer Air Transport Network: Cost Efficiency under Capacity and Minimum Service Constraints for Airports in Papua

Abstract

This study develops a two-stage optimisation model to evaluate Indonesia's pioneer passenger air transport network in Papua, including Dobo Airport in Maluku Province as a connected external node. The model addresses the need to improve public-service efficiency while preserving historical demand and satisfying airport capacity feasibility, belly cargo requirements, and minimum service levels for remote communities. The first stage applies a capacitated location-allocation formulation to assign spoke airports to existing hubs or selected potential hubs. The second stage optimises annual flight frequency on the resulting pioneer arcs under passenger capacity, belly cargo capacity, symmetric operation, and network-level load factor constraints. Network cost combines link operating cost and airport terminal cost, while commercial continuation is used as an availability indicator and emissions are evaluated after optimisation. Five scenarios were tested by varying minimum frequency and network load factor targets. The selected scenario reduces network cost from Rp649.32 billion to Rp603.96 billion, generating savings of Rp45.36 billion, or 6.99%. The average load factor increases from 74.84% to 90.28%. The optimised network serves all historical passenger demand without violating hub capacity constraints.