We present a recent optimization approach that can be applied equally to aircraft routing, crew pairing generation and bidding/rostering problems arising in the airline industry. We first delineate the important elements of the three problem environments. We next discuss the underlying structure of these problems. We then describe the optimization approach. We finally report our computational experience on a series of test problems porvided by different airline companies. The results illustrate both the practical applicability of the new approach to large scale problems and its computational efficiency.