A multi-start randomized heuristic for real-life crew rostering problems in airlines with work-balancing goals

Jésica de Armas, Luis Cadarso (), Angel Juan and Javier Faulin ()
Additional contact information
Luis Cadarso: Rey Juan Carlos University
Javier Faulin: Campus Arrosadia - Public University of Navarre

Annals of Operations Research, 2017, vol. 258, issue 2, No 28, 825-848

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Air transportation; Crew rostering problem; Randomized heuristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-016-2260-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:annopr:v:258:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10479-016-2260-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-016-2260-y

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().