Abstract: To reduce the fleet training costs by optimizing the general training fleet composition (primary-grade aircraft, medium-grade aircraft, senior-grade aircraft) under network training mode, the multi-stage aviation training process with multi-base for a weighted directed network is abstracted. Then, considering several limitations including the total number of aviation training students, the flowing balance conditions, the available flying hours of the training fleet and the least number of deployed general airplanes on each training base as constraints, a general fleet composition optimization model was constructed with objective of minimizing the total fleet training costs. For a numeric example with the scale of 3 training bases and 1, 000 training aviation drivers in a training cycle, the simulation results show that for the same number of training aviation drivers the model presented in this paper can decrease the type number of fleet deployed to each training base to 2, 1, and 2 respectively. Furthermore, the total fleet training costs can be reduced by 2.7% as opposed to the use of general training mode. These results suggest that both the type number of fleet deployed to each training base and the fleet training costs can be significantly decreased under the network training mode.

Key words: fleet composition, weighted directed network model, general training aircraft, network training