Increasing Stability of Crew Schedules in Airlines

In airline traffic disruptions occur frequently and cannot be totally avoided. They may lead to infeasible aircraft and crew schedules during the day of operations, due to absence of resources or violation of crew rules. The process of finding new schedules in such cases is called recovery or disruption management. The short-term recovery actions usually imply additional costs meaning that the total operational costs of a crew schedule can be significantly higher than the original planned costs. It is generally desirable to construct the schedule already in the planning phase in such a way that not just the planned costs, but the total operational costs are minimized. The goal is thus to construct schedules which remain feasible or can be recovered without high costs in cases of disturbances. This approach is generally called robust scheduling.