Scheduling Airline Reserve Crew to Minimise Crew Related Delay Using Simulated Airline Recovery and a Probabilistic Optimisation Model

This paper addresses the problem of airline reserve crew scheduling for a single hub and spoke network. The proposed method involves a simulation parameter generation phase used to derive probabilities of crew related delay and associated expected delay durations. The parameter generation simulation simulates recovery from delays by searching for crew and aircraft swaps that absorb delays, therefore the probabilities of crew related delay are independent of the effects of reserve crew. The parameters generated in the simulation phase are stored in matrices which record the causal relationship of propagating crew related delays. The parameter matrices are then used to search for a reserve crew schedule that minimises the total expected crew related delay. The search method is based on calculating the effect a given reserve schedule has on the probabilities of crew related delays occurring. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model minimises crew related delay in comparison to a variety of alternative methods of reserve crew scheduling for the problem instances considered here.