Abstract: Effective connection of pickup-truck and aircraft is of importance for express service providers. A mixed integer programming model for pickup-truck and aircraft scheduling problem in air express is put forward. Benders decomposition and a two-stage heuristic algorithm are used to solve the mixed integer programming model. The computational experiments on various instances show that the model and algorithms are correct and effective.Computational results provide some important decision reference to express service providers. From the angle of synchronous scheduling of pickup-trucks and aircrafts, constraints on service timeliness and capacity matching are used to describe the interactions between ground and air network. The current study supplements modelconstructing ways of vehicle routing problem.

Key words: air express, pickup-truck and aircraft scheduling, pickup route, heuristic algorithm