A crew scheduling algorithms widely used in practice assume no disruptions. Because disruptions often occur, the actual cost of the resulting crew schedules is often greater. We consider algorithms for finding crew schedules that perform well in practice. The deterministic crew scheduling model is an approximation of crew scheduling under uncertainty with the assumption that all pairings will o...

With the technology available today, fully automatic, optimization based, scheduling methods can be used to significantly improve the efficiency of a wide range of transportation and scheduling tasks. In this paper we will discuss and highlight some design issues for such systems. In particular we will describe our own experience in the development and use of the Carmen system for airline crew ...

In scheduled air transportation, airline profitability is influenced by the airline's ability to construct flight schedules. To produce operational schedules, airlines engage in a complex decision-making process, referred to as airline schedule planning. Because it is impossible to simultaneously solve the entire airline schedule planning problem, the decisions required have historically been s...

Aircraft fleet can have a major effect on the efficiency and smooth running of an airline. Constructing good quality schedules is vital for an airline to operate in an effective and efficient way in order to accomplish high levels of consumer satisfaction and to maximise profits. The robustness of an airline schedule is an indicative measure of how good the schedule is because a robust plan all...

The fleet assignment problem (FAP) deals with assigning aircraft types, each having a different capacity, to the scheduled flights, based on equipment capabilities and availabilities, operational costs, and potential revenues. An airline s fleeting decision highly impacts its revenues, and thus, constitutes an essential component of its overall scheduling process. However, due to the large numb...

Publications in the working paper series are issued for discussion and are not considered final reports. Comments are invited. In flight scheduling, airlines usually determine optimal timing for their flights to respond to time-dependent demand and the requirement of frequency plans, of available fleets and of aircraft routings. Nevertheless, it is unavoidable that some flights cannot actually ...

Since the 1950s, the operations research community has developed a large number of computer models to aid in the solution of airline scheduling problems. One notable characteristic of these contributions is that each algorithm was developed with its own input and output structures, user interface, and hardware and software requirements. The result is that many of these contributions are under-u...