TY - JOUR
T1 - Robust airline crew scheduling with flight flying time variability
AU - Wen, Xin
AU - Ma, Hoi Lam
AU - Chung, Sai Ho
AU - Khan, Waqar Ahmed
N1 - Funding Information:
The work described in this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (UGC/FDS14/E04/19).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - The crew pairing problem is one of the most important but challenging tasks for commercial airlines. However, the operation environment of the aviation industry is highly volatile with diverse uncertainties. Flight flying time variability is an important disruption that usually causes deviations of flight departure/arrival times from the schedule. Traditional crew pairing frameworks without considering flight flying time variability can generate pairings that are fragile to flight delays. However, the impact of flight flying time variability on crew pairings is under-explored. In this paper, we propose two robustness enhancement strategies based on the consideration of flight flying time variability (i.e., encouraging deviation-affected-free flights and discouraging deviation-affected flights). Besides, two robustness measurements are developed to construct two novel robust crew pairing models. One is time based while the other is number based. A customized column generation based solution algorithm is proposed. Computational experiments based on real flight schedules show that our new models can greatly enhance solution robustness (e.g., 49.1% more deviation-buffer time) at a price of an acceptable increase in operating costs (e.g., 9.7%) compared with the traditional model. Besides, extreme-delay flights can be completely avoided in the proposed models. Moreover, the solutions obtained from the time-based model show higher resistance against the disruption of flight flying time variability with a lower operating cost than the number-based model.
AB - The crew pairing problem is one of the most important but challenging tasks for commercial airlines. However, the operation environment of the aviation industry is highly volatile with diverse uncertainties. Flight flying time variability is an important disruption that usually causes deviations of flight departure/arrival times from the schedule. Traditional crew pairing frameworks without considering flight flying time variability can generate pairings that are fragile to flight delays. However, the impact of flight flying time variability on crew pairings is under-explored. In this paper, we propose two robustness enhancement strategies based on the consideration of flight flying time variability (i.e., encouraging deviation-affected-free flights and discouraging deviation-affected flights). Besides, two robustness measurements are developed to construct two novel robust crew pairing models. One is time based while the other is number based. A customized column generation based solution algorithm is proposed. Computational experiments based on real flight schedules show that our new models can greatly enhance solution robustness (e.g., 49.1% more deviation-buffer time) at a price of an acceptable increase in operating costs (e.g., 9.7%) compared with the traditional model. Besides, extreme-delay flights can be completely avoided in the proposed models. Moreover, the solutions obtained from the time-based model show higher resistance against the disruption of flight flying time variability with a lower operating cost than the number-based model.
KW - Airline crew pairing
KW - Column generation
KW - Flying time variability
KW - Robust scheduling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095452194&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.tre.2020.102132
DO - 10.1016/j.tre.2020.102132
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85095452194
VL - 144
JO - Transportation Research, Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review
JF - Transportation Research, Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review
SN - 1366-5545
M1 - 102132
ER -