The airline crew pairing problem (CPP) is one of the classical problems in airline operations research due to its crucial impact on the cost structure of an airline. Moreover, the complex crew regulations and the large scale of the resulting mathematical programming models have rendered it an academically interesting problem over decades. The CPP is a tactical problem, typically solved over a m...

We extend the common depth-first backtrack search for constraint satisfaction problems with randomized variable and value selection. The resulting methods are applied to real-world instances of the tail assignment problem, a certain kind of airline planning problem. We analyze the performance impact of these extensions and, in order to exploit the improvements, add restarts to the search proced...

The airline industry is notably one of the success stories with respect to the use of optimization based methods and tools in planning. Both in planning of the assignment of available aircraft to flights and in crew scheduling, these methods play a

Purpose The static world of flight scheduling where schedules rarely change once published is becoming more responsive with schedule updates leading up to the departure date due demand volatility and unpredictable patterns. Innovation in cash flow generation will take center stage operate business these uncertain times. Forecasting for future flights a challenge since historical patterns are no...

Airline deregulation is spreading worldwide and has important consequences for the planning, design, and management of airports. One important effect is that the overall traffic at an airport -and by extension its revenues is much more volatile in a liberal environment. This is demonstrated by analysis of the US experience over the last twenty-five years. The increased risk thus associated with...

P by high labor costs, low profitability margins, airspace and airport congestion, high capital and operating costs, security and safety concerns, and complex and large-scale management and operations decisions, the airline industry has armed its planners with sophisticated optimization tools to improve decision making and increase airline profits. In this paper, we describe optimization approa...

The cost of ight crews is the second largest operating cost of an airline. Minimizing it is a fundamental problem in airline planning and operations, and one which has leant itself to mathematical optimization. We discuss several recent advances in the methods used to solve these problems. After describing the general approach taken, we discuss a new method which can be used to obtain approxima...

It is essential that airlines efficiently perform aircraft maintenance in order to ensure aviation safety and schedule punctuality. Traditionally, the arrangement of the maintenance manpower supply has been based on staff experience, and has been performed manually following simple rules. This is not only time-consuming but often ineffective. In this research we consider technicians with multip...

The airline fleet assignment problem involves assigning aircrafts to flights to maximize profit. Different fleet assignment solutions cause dramatically different performance in subsequent crew planning and operational processes. We have developed an integrated fleet and crew robust planning method to provide fleet assignment solutions that are both friendly to crew planning and robust to real ...