Abstract
This paper proposes a multi-start randomized heuristic for solving real-life crew rostering problems in airlines. The paper describes realistic constrains, regulations, and rules that have not been considered in the literature so far. Our algorithm is designed to provide quality solutions satisfying these real-life specifications while, at the same time, it aims at balancing the workload distribution among the different crewmembers. Thus, our approach promotes corporate social responsibility by distributing the workload in a fair way and avoiding that some crewmembers get unnecessarily overstressed. Despite its importance in real-life applications, these aspects have seldom been considered in the crew scheduling literature, where most solving approaches refer to simplified models and are tested on non-realistic benchmarks. The experimental tests show that our algorithm is capable of generating feasible quality solutions to real-life crew rostering problems in just a few seconds. These times are orders of magnitude lower than the times currently employed by some airlines to obtain a single feasible solution, since the ‘optimal’ solutions provided by most commercial software usually require additional adjustments in order to meet all the real-life specifications.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (TRA2013-48180-C3-P, TRA2015-71883-REDT), FEDER, and the Ibero-American Program for Science and Technology for Development (CYTED2014-515RT0489). Likewise we want to acknowledge the support received by the Department of Universities, Research & Information Society of the Catalan Government (2014-CTP-00001) and the CAN Foundation in Navarre, Spain (CAN2015-3963).
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Appendix
Appendix
This “Appendix” extends the data provided in the experimental section to better illustrate the concepts. It also shows details of solutions from the airline and from our algorithm.
Daily flight schedule
Aircraft routing
Crew pairings
Crew rostering solution implemented by the airline
Solution to the crew rostering problem given by our first approach
Solution to the crew rostering problem given by our second approach
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de Armas, J., Cadarso, L., Juan, A.A. et al. A multi-start randomized heuristic for real-life crew rostering problems in airlines with work-balancing goals. Ann Oper Res 258, 825–848 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-016-2260-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-016-2260-y