A Mixed-Integer Programming Approach for an Extended Fixed Route Hybrid Electric Aircraft Charging Problem

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Anthony Deschênes, Raphaël Boudreault, Jonathan Gaudreault, Claude-Guy Quimper

Published: 2025, Last Modified: 15 Dec 2025ICORES 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Air mobility is rapidly transitioning towards hybrid electric aircraft. In the context of multi-flight missions, aircraft operators will need to consider numerous infrastructure and operational constraints in their planning, where predicting energy usage is critical. This problem is introduced in previous work as the Fixed Route Hybrid Electric Aircraft Charging Problem (FRHACP) and a Dynamic Programming (DP) approach is proposed. It consists of deciding a cost-optimal charging, refueling, and hybridization strategy for a given aircraft route. In this paper, we introduce an extended version of this problem with additional constraints and soft schedule requirements. We then propose a Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) approach to solve it and compare its performance against an updated DP approach on a benchmark of 10 realistic instances. Results demonstrate that MIP consistently produces superior solutions than DP, both with and without gradient descent post-treatment, achieving average