Approach to Robust Tail Assignment

Ivan Dovica

Abstract

Due to the growth in air traffic and because of tight schedules, delays have become a major problem of airlines. Clearly, delayed flights and disrupted passenger connections increase operational costs and can harm the image of an airline. One way to deal with this problem is to add buffers to schedules. Such buffers are costly and should be used as effectively as possible. In addition to buffers, airline use recovery actions such as aircraft swaps, flight cancellations, and ferry legs. Ideally, a flight plan would anticipate delays and maximize recovery opportunities at minimum cost; such a failure-proof schedule is called robust.

In this talk we introduce optimization problems in airline industry and focus on a robust version of the tail assignment problem. We model this problem as optimization problem in which non-robustness costs are minimized. Our approach is based on a stochastic model of the operation of an airline. In our talk