Airlines are increasingly trying to differentiate their offers, so one airline’s bare bones low fare may, for some travelers, be equivalent to another airline’s high fare, if the low fare bundles some ancillaries a traveler wants. Because of differentiation of airline offers the air traveler must simultaneously compare air fares and the ancillaries included. Price comparison is also difficult as the same cabin offers vary by the ancillaries included across the competing airlines. We are proposing a shelf product assortment method for categorizing airline offers into utility levels, thus facilitating the choice task of air travelers. We describe possible known approaches, describe Sabre’s proposal, provide information on the optimization methods used, and propose future work in the field.

航空公司越来越试图区分他们的报价，因此，对于某些旅客来说，一家航空公司的空头低票价可能等同于另一家航空公司的高票价，如果低价捆绑了旅客想要的一些辅助设施。由于航空公司提供的差异，旅客必须同时比较机票价格和所含的附属设施。价格比较也很困难，因为同一个客舱的报价因竞争航空公司附带的附属设施而异。我们提出一种货架产品分类方法，将航空公司的报价分类为实用程序级别，从而简化了航空旅行者的选择任务。我们描述了可能的已知方法，描述了Sabre的提议，提供了有关所用优化方法的信息，并提出了该领域的未来工作。