Correspondence: Bjoern Becker, Lufthansa Cargo AG, Gate 25, Building 451, Room 4905, 60594 Frankfurt Airport, Germany. Tel: +49 151 58927600; Fax: +49 69 696 9895874; E-mail: bjoern.becker@dlh.de

¹Bjoern Becker is responsible for the development of the Order and Margin Management IT-Systems at Lufthansa Cargo AG. He holds a master in Business Management focused on IT Management and Logistics and has led various IT projects at Lufthansa Cargo including revenue management projects. With seven years of experience in different fields of air cargo and IT-project management, he is member of the AGIFORS Cargo Study Group as well as the Deutsche Verkehrswissenschaftliche Gesellschaft. In 2007, he started his doctoral studies at the European Business School with the focus on Air Cargo Revenue Management and has published and presented several articles in international journals and conferences.

²Prof Dr Andreas Wald is Assistant Professor for Aviation Management at the European Business School (EBS). He is the head of the Competence Center Strategic Aviation Management and as Director of Studies responsible for the programme 'Bachelor in Aviation Management' at EBS. Besides aviation management, his research is focused on project management, organisational networks and network analysis.

Received 30 January 2008; Revised 30 January 2008; Published online 18 April 2008.

Abstract

Overbooking is one of the most important processes of Air Cargo Revenue Management (ACRM). Airlines can improve their capacity utilisation and increase revenue and profitability. Overbooking, however, can on the other hand lead to offloads and suffering service quality. Current overbooking methods usually work on the flight event level and forecast shows up ratios based on historical flight events. These methods were derived from passenger airline overbooking models and imply various problems as the business requirements of air cargo differ significantly from the passenger business. This paper suggests a new approach for ACRM using certain parameters of the Shipment Information Record (SIR) to forecast the show up behaviour of a shipment. As this methodology is again derived from the so-called Passenger Name Record (PNR)-based overbooking of the passenger business, this paper focuses on the analysis whether it is reasonable to adapt the PNR-based method for air cargo. Some basic definitions that are necessary for future research are provided and the results of an expert survey that was processed to identify the parameters that significantly determine the shipment show up behaviour are presented. The aim is to provide the necessary foundations for further research on SIR-based overbooking.