Using Heuristics to Solve the Dedicated Aircraft Recovery Problem

Michael Loeve (michaelloeve.info)
Kim R. Soerensen (kimcarmen.se)
Jesper Larsen (jlaimm.dtu.dk)
Jens Clausen (jcimm.dtu.dk)

Abstract: The Dedicated Aircraft Recovery Problem (DARP) involves decisions concerning aircraft to flight assignments in situations where unforeseen events have disrupted the existing flight schedule, e.g. bad weather causing flight delays. The dedicated aircraft recovery problem aims to recover these flight schedules through a series of reassignments of aircraft to flights, delaying of flights and cancellations of flights. This article describes an effective method to solve DARP. A heuristic is implemented, which is able to generate feasible revised flight schedules of good quality in less than 10 seconds when applied to real flight schedules with disruptions from British Airways. The heuristic is able to consider delays, cancellations and reassignments simultaneously and balance the trade-off between these options. It is also demonstrated that different strategies can be applied to prioritize these options when generating the revised flight schedules without affecting the solution time required.

Keywords: Disruption Management, Optimization, Airline Planning, Dedicated Aircraft Recovery, Heuristic, Irregular Operations

Category 1: Applications -- OR and Management Sciences (Airline Optimization )

Category 2: Combinatorial Optimization (Meta Heuristics )

Citation: unpublished: Technical Report IMM-TR-2001-18 Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark November/2001

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Entry Submitted: 11/12/2001
Entry Accepted: 11/12/2001
Entry Last Modified: 11/12/2001

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