Modelling and analysis of integrated airline scheduling

Abstract

The present-day airline industry is very much dependent on operations research newlinetechniques in a broad spectrum of areas such as strategic planning, schedule generation, newlinefleet assignment, maintenance routing, crew pairing and rostering, passenger recovery newlineand daily operational tasks. The general practices of airline scheduling and planning are newlinesequential in nature. The timetable scheduling and fleet planning that constitute newlinestrategic planning are performed based on the forecasts of customer demand and are newlinerendered months or even years before the day of operation. Once the flight schedule is newlinegenerated, a flight network is constructed, and all flight legs are assigned to various newlinefleets (aircraft type), and this process is called a fleet assignment. newlineFederal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US has established maintenance newlineregulations. The FAA mandates that airlines perform four types of aircraft maintenance, newlinegenerally named as A, B, C and D-checks. These checks vary based on airline and newlineaircraft, depending on scope, duration, and frequency. The aircraft are generally newlineassigned to the routes a few weeks before the day of its operation. When approaching newlinethe day of operation, due to stochastic events (such as equipment failure or severe newlineweather changes), unscheduled maintenances appear, which disrupt the original newlineschedule by changing the flights in the line-of-flight, thus leading to a suboptimal newlinesolution. This disruption in operation also affects other modules, like crew pairing, that newlinedepends on the aircraft routing and significantly impacts the operations (as employees newlineand passengers are also involved). newline