Robust crew pairing : delays analysis and implementation of optimization approaches

With increasing delays and airport congestion that disturb airline operations, the development of robust schedules is becoming crucial. Increased traffic and poor weather are a few of the causes of airport congestion, rising delays and lengthening passenger trips. In this thesis, we identify the latest trend in the flight arrival and departure delays, differentiating major U.S. airports from other smaller airports. We also quantify the types of delays airlines should work to mitigate. We then analyze the effects of schedules changes that were implemented by a major U.S. airline at their largest hub. We measure the effects of these schedule changes on on-time performance, taxi time, plane utilization, and passenger connection and total travel time. We also analyze how extensive is the practice of adding buffer time to flight times to improve schedule reliability. Finally, we propose and implement a new model to achieve robust crew schedules, that is, crew schedules that are less likely to be inoperable due to disruptions during operations. We show that with an increase in crew costs of 0.2%, we can decrease the number of times crews must connect between different aircraft by 32%.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Leroyer, Pierre, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cynthia Barnhart.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36168

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36168