An integer programming approach to support the US Air Forceʹs air mobility network

The United States Air Forceʹs air mobility command is responsible for creating a schedule and executing that schedule for a large-scale air mobility network that encompasses aircraft with prioritized missions. Aerial ports (airports) can process or park a maximum number of aircraft, called the maximum on ground (MOG). As the schedule changes due to disruptions, such as equipment failure or weather, the MOG constraint can cause the new schedule to be infeasible. Traditionally, re-planning the channel route schedule to adhere to MOG constraints has been a manual process that usually stops after the first feasible set of changes is found, due to the challenges of large amounts of data and urgency for a re-plan. We extend Bertsimas and Stockʹs integer program formulation for the commercial airline Multi-Airport Ground-Holding Problem to the air mobility network. Our integer programming formulation recommends delays to certain aircraft on the ground to minimize the effects of system-wide disruptions while taking account mission priorities of the aircraft.