MAKING AIRLINE SCHEDULES MORE ROBUST

Aircraft fleet can have a major effect on the efficiency and smooth running of an airline. Constructing good quality schedules is essential 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 allows the airline to cope with the unexpected disturbances which normally occur on a daily basis. This paper describes a method to measure the robustness of schedules for aircraft fleet scheduling within KLM airlines. The method is based on the ‘Aircraft on Ground (ACOG)’ measure, it employs statistical methods (although alternative methods were also considered) and it is shown to provide a good estimation of the robustness of a given schedule.

[1]  Cheng-Lung Wu,et al.  Towards the optimisation of the schedule reliability of aircraft rotations , 2002 .

[2]  Yosef S. Sherif,et al.  AN ALGORITHM FOR COMPUTER ASSISTED SEQUENCING AND SCHEDULING OF TERMINAL AREA OPERATIONS , 1991 .

[3]  Shangyao Yan,et al.  Airline Scheduling for the Temporary Closure of Airports , 1997, Transp. Sci..

[4]  Ram Gopalan,et al.  Mathematical models in airline schedule planning: A survey , 1998, Ann. Oper. Res..

[5]  Jens Clausen,et al.  Disruption Management for an Airline - Rescheduling of Aircraft , 2002, EvoWorkshops.

[6]  Gang Yu,et al.  A Grasp for Aircraft Routing in Response to Groundings and Delays , 1997, J. Comb. Optim..

[7]  Roy E. Marsten,et al.  COLDSTART -- FLEET ASSIGNMENT AT DELTA AIR LINES. , 1994 .

[8]  Michael A. Bolender,et al.  EVALUATION OF SCHEDULING METHODS FOR MULTIPLE RUNWAYS , 2000 .

[9]  Gang Yu,et al.  A Bundle Algorithm Approach for the Aircraft Schedule Recovery Problem During Hub Closures , 2003, Transp. Sci..

[10]  Heinz Erzberger,et al.  Delay Exchanges in Arrival Sequencing and Scheduling , 1999 .

[11]  Jonathan F. Bard,et al.  Flight Scheduling and Maintenance Base Planning , 1989 .

[12]  José D. P. Rolim,et al.  Fleet Scheduling Optimization: A Simulated Annealing Approach , 2000, PATAT.

[13]  Fang Lu.  Integrated airline scheduling : models and algorithms , 1997 .

[14]  Andres G. Zellweger,et al.  Fast-Time Study of Airline-Influenced Arrival Sequencing and Scheduling , 2001 .

[15]  George L. Nemhauser,et al.  Maintenance and Crew Considerations in Fleet Assignment , 1996, Transp. Sci..

[16]  James V. Hansen,et al.  Genetic search methods in air traffic control , 2004, Comput. Oper. Res..

[17]  John E. Beasley,et al.  Scheduling aircraft landings at London Heathrow using a population heuristic , 2001, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[18]  Bertil Marksjö,et al.  Airline Base Schedule Optimisation by Flight Network Annealing , 2001, Ann. Oper. Res..

[19]  Rainer Schrader,et al.  Modeling and Solving an Airline Schedule Generation Problem , 2001, Ann. Oper. Res..

[20]  Dennis F. X. Mathaisel.  Decision Support for Airline Schedule Planning , 1997, J. Comb. Optim..

[21]  Janić Milan,et al.  The flow management problem in air traffic control: a model of assigning priorities for landings at a congested airport , 1997 .

[22]  Suresh Acharya,et al.  US Airways Automates Its Weekend Fleet Assignment , 1999, Interfaces.

[23]  Ram Narasimhan,et al.  An Efficient Airline Re-Fleeting Model for the Incremental Modification of Planned Fleet Assignments , 2000, Transp. Sci..

[24]  George L. Nemhauser,et al.  A Stochastic Model of Airline Operations , 2002, Transp. Sci..

[25]  Kalyan T. Talluri.  Swapping Applications in a Daily Airline Fleet Assignment , 1996, Transp. Sci..

[26]  J. G. Klincewicz,et al.  The Airline Exception Scheduling Problem , 1995, Transp. Sci..

[27]  Dennis F. X. Mathaisel,et al.  Airline Scheduling: An Overview , 1985, Transp. Sci..

[28]  Cynthia Barnhart,et al.  Airline Fleet Assignment with Time Windows , 2000, Transp. Sci..

[29]  George L. Nemhauser,et al.  Flight String Models for Aircraft Fleeting and Routing , 1998, Transp. Sci..

[30]  Michael A. Bolender,et al.  Evaluation of scheduling methods for multiple runways , 1996 .

[31]  Daniel Delahaye,et al.  Flights Alternative Routes Generator by Genetic Algorithms , 2000 .

[32]  Heinz Erzberger,et al.  AIRLINE ARRIVAL PRIORITIZATION IN SEQUENCING AND SCHEDULING , 1998 .

[33]  Heinz Erzberger,et al.  Fast-Time Study of Airline-Influenced Arrival Sequencing and Scheduling , 2000 .

[34]  Alberto Vasquez-Marquez.  American Airlines Arrival Slot Allocation System (ASAS) , 1991 .

[35]  Jephthah A. Abara,et al.  Applying Integer Linear Programming to the Fleet Assignment Problem , 1989 .

[36]  George L. Nemhauser,et al.  The fleet assignment problem: Solving a large-scale integer program , 1995, Math. Program..

[37]  David Abramson,et al.  Scheduling Aircraft Landings - The Static Case , 2000, Transp. Sci..

[38]  L. Bianco,et al.  A simulation model for aircraft sequencing in the near terminal area , 1981 .

[39]  Robert Richardson.  An Optimization Approach to Routing Aircraft , 1976 .

[40]  Colonel Roche,et al.  A dynamic approach for aircraft assignment and maintenance scheduling by airlines , 2000 .

[41]  Marc Schoenauer,et al.  Alternative flight route generator by genetic algorithms , 2000, Proceedings of the 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation. CEC00 (Cat. No.00TH8512).

[42]  Paul Scerri,et al.  Real time genetic scheduling of aircraft landing times , 1998, 1998 IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Proceedings. IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (Cat. No.98TH8360).

[43]  Jonathan F. Bard,et al.  Multiple fleet aircraft schedule recovery following hub closures , 2001 .

[44]  Lucio Bianco,et al.  A Simulation Model for Aircraft Sequencing in the Near Terminal Area , 1978 .

[45]  Helmut Richter,et al.  Thirty Years of Airline Operations Research , 1989 .

[46]  Russell A. Rushmeier,et al.  Advances in the Optimization of Airline Fleet Assignment , 1997, Transp. Sci..

[47]  Cynthia Barnhart,et al.  Airline Schedule Planning: Integrated Models and Algorithms for Schedule Design and Fleet Assignment , 2004, Transp. Sci..

[48]  K. Ruland,et al.  A model for aeromedical routing and scheduling , 1999 .

[49]  Jonathan F. Bard,et al.  Improving through-flight schedules , 1987 .

[50]  Jerzy A. Filar,et al.  How Airlines and Airports Recover from Schedule Perturbations: A Survey , 2001, Ann. Oper. Res..

[51]  Arthur E. McGarity,et al.  Design And Operation Of Civil And Environmental Engineering Systems , 1997 .

[52]  Paul Scerri,et al.  An Anytime Algorithm for Scheduling of Aircraft Landing Times Using Genetic Algorithms , 1997 .

[53]  Cynthia Barnhart,et al.  Itinerary-Based Airline Fleet Assignment , 2002, Transp. Sci..