A New Era for Crew Recovery at Continental Airlines

Abstract

Airlines face schedule disruptions daily because of unexpected events, including inclement weather, aircraft mechanical problems, and crew unavailability. These disruptions can cause flight delays and cancellations. As a result, crews may not be in position to service their remaining scheduled flights. Airlines must reassign crews quickly to cover open flights and to return them to their original schedules in a cost-effective manner while honoring all government regulations, contractual obligations, and quality-of-life requirements. CALEB Technologies developed the CrewSolver decision-support system for Continental Airlines to generate globally optimal, or near optimal, crew-recovery solutions. Since its implementation, the system has dealt successfully with several high-profile events, including the December 2000 and March 2001 Nor'easter snowstorms, the June 2001 Houston flood, and most dramatically, the September 11th terrorist attacks. In each case, Continental recovered quickly and obtained overall benefits worth millions of dollars. Continental estimates that in 2001 the CrewSolver system helped it save approximately US $40 million for major disruptions only.

Airline Schedule Planning: Accomplishments and Opportunities

“…Rosenberger et al (2001b) propose an optimization model for aircraft recovery that partially captures passenger connections as well. Yu et al (2003) have developed an approach to generate nearoptimal crew recovery solutions.…”

“…This impact is deeply significant when you consider that without revenue management and schedule-planning systems in the period 1990-2000, American Airlines would have been profitable in only one year, an all-time record year for profitability (Cook 2000). Other testimonials to the impact of optimization of the airline industry can be found in Yu et al (2003), Butchers et al (2001), Wiper et al (1994), Smith et al (1992), and Patty et al (1991).…”

Disruption Management in Passenger Railway Transportation

“…Yu et al [35] reports the savings that Continental Airlines has realized in three major disruptions due to the re-organization of their disruption management process and the installation of decision support systems. The used crew re-scheduling model is based on the prototype described by Song et al [28].…”

“…Moreover OR models have proven to be quite effective already for supporting disruption management processes in the airline context, see e.g. Yu et al [35].…”

Planning Problems in Public Transit

“…However, in these areas disruption management is usually done by experienced dispatchers. In air traffic, first successes with mathematical methods are reported, e.g., at the American carrier Continental Airlines [38]. The software companies have started to take up the topic.…”