Crew Pairing Optimization

Abstract

Next to fuel costs, crew costs are the largest direct operating cost of airlines. Therefore much research has been devoted to the planning and scheduling of crews over the last thirty years. The planning and scheduling of crews is usually considered as two problems: the crew pairing problem and the crew assignment (rostering) problem. These problems are solved sequentially. In this paper we focus on the pairing problem. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, we give an overview of the crew pairing problem and synthesize the optimization methods that have been published previously. Second, we present the Carmen pairing construction system which is in operation at most major European airlines. Our purpose is to identify the particular properties of the Carmen system that have made this system the preferred decision support system for crew pairing optimization in Europe.

Solving the selective multi-category parallel-servicing problem

“…Similarly, in the crew pairing problem faced by airlines, one must determine an optimal subset of flights to be flown by each crew member (see e.g. Anbil et al (1993); Andersson et al (1998)). Typically, the selection problem for each vehicle/crew member appears as the subproblem in a column generation framework and is solved as a resource-constrained shortest-path problem.…”

Airline Crew Scheduling Under Uncertainty

“…Recent work on deterministic airline crew scheduling include Lavoie et al 1988, Gershkoff 1989, Anbil et al (1991, 1992a, 1992b, Graves et al 1993, Hoffman and Padberg 1993, Barnhart et al 1994, Andersson et al 1997, Chu et al 1997, Vance et al 1997, Klabjan et al (1999a, 1999b, 1999c provides computational results for a few fleets smaller than fleets flown by major carriers.…”

Heuristics to solve the integrated airline crew assignment problem

“…The CPP seeks to provide an optimal set of pairings that covers all the planned flights. Then, in the CRP, the best combination of rosters (composed by the pairings of CPP and other activities) to crew members is determined, seeking the optimal coverage of planned flights and, eventually, the balancing of the total flying time among the crew members (Andersson et al, 1998;Barnhart et al, 2003;Kohl and Karisch, 2004;Gopalakrishnan and Johnson, 2005).…”

“…The exact methods are only used for small-sized problems (Andersson et al, 1998;Barnhart et al, 2003;Cabral et al, 2000;Kohn and Karisch, 2004;Gopalakrishnan and Johnson, 2005;Lucic and Teodorovic, 2007;Maenhout and Vanhoucke, 2010).…”