A risk-based approach to solving the problem of airline schedule operational management

The paper discusses the problem of optimal regulation of aircraft assignments for airline flights. Due to the fact that the activities of the airline are subject to changes caused by both external and internal environment, the planned schedule needs continuous management and control. In the event when the actual flight schedule deviates from the planned one, it is necessary to promptly make a decision on adjusting (restoring) the schedule and reassigning aircraft. Operational schedule management involves making adjustments to the current schedule from a depth of several hours to several days. The solution to the problem is to determine the unambiguous correspondence of flights and specific aircraft subject to maximizing the likelihood of meeting production targets and observing a number of restrictions. The task of managing airline schedules belongs to the class of scheduling optimization problems for parallel-sequential systems studied within the scheduling theory. It is NP-hard and requires the development of computationally efficient solution algorithms. However, the issue of choosing criteria for the optimization problem deserves special attention, since the correct choice plays an essential role in terms of assessing the effectiveness of decision-making. In the theory of decision-making, no general method for choosing the optimality criteria has been found. The definition of the target criterion depends on the expectations of the production. Within the framework of this paper, an original criterion is proposed for constructing an optimal solution to the discrete problem of managing aircraft assignments, the main idea of which is to find a balance between the duration of the schedule and the number of flights with a negative deviation from the planned schedule by assessing the level of punctuality violation risk. The paper gives a detailed concept of punctuality, describes an approach to assessing the level of risk, and also proposes an original formal formulation of the task of operational management of aircraft assignments based on the criterion of minimizing the risk of violation of flight punctuality.

Sustainability and Air Freight Transportation: Lessons from the Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 crisis has transformed the delivery of services and goods by public, private, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with one of the largest impacts being in air transport systems. This paper focuses on related opportunities and challenges within air freight transport management, exploring sustainability in light of recent, heavy human and economic costs across the world. There is, in the resulting process of recovery, the potential to create changes in the airline industry and across a number of private and public partnerships that will improve long-term environmental, social, and economic sustainability and stability. This paper also describes the impact of the current environment on air cargo operations to include the role of significantly reduced airline schedules on overall air cargo capacity. It considers the potential role of government in providing the infrastructure for collaboration between sectors, addressing the goals of sustainability, efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen responsiveness. NGOs provide a voice for community groups in ways that governments and corporations may not. Efficient markets link producers at various stages to consumers through global and local supply chains. Integrating key concepts from sustainable development and logistics, this paper explores short-run and long-run planning required by each of the three sectors to tackle the immediate shortfalls in global transportation by air. It then investigates urgent but longer-term environmental issues tied to air transport, such as global climate change, air pollution, and the nonrenewable nature of fossil fuels. Many of the infrastructural changes in the airline industry may offer solutions across public administration. With the tremendous impact of air transport on a number of other goods and services, carefully constructed solutions may have sustainability benefits across industries. As the tragedies of COVID-19 inevitably shake the foundations of organizational systems in all three sectors, this paper offers recommendations for advancing opportunities for a more efficient freight supply industry that minimize negative impacts through sustainable development.

A heuristic method for solving airline crew pairing problems

The airline crew pairing problem is one of the optimization problems which classified as a NP-hard problem. Since the number of feasible pairings in flight schedules can be numerous, the exact methods will not efficient to solve the problem. We propose a heuristic method for solving crew pairing problems. Initially, we generate a feasible solution by maximizing the covered flights. Then, we improve the solution by constructing a procedure to avoid the local optimal solution. We test our method to an airline schedules. The computational results show that our method can give the optimal solution in short period of time.

3. Linear equations and inequalities

‘Linear equations and inequalities’ describes how to solve the simpler type of linear equations with one unknown and simultaneous linear equations with two unknowns. It also introduces manipulation of inequality signs, and closes with an example of finding the values of unknown quantities that satisfy particular equations while being constrained to lie within certain ranges. This mathematics underpins much of the logistics of modern society, governing operations such as railway and airline schedules, while allowing businesses to meet customer demand by running lower stock inventories, which represents an enormous and ongoing cost saving. The algebraic ideas of elimination and constraint satisfaction underlie all this.