A Multi-Objective Mathematical Formulation for the Airline Crew Scheduling Problem: MODE and NSGA-II Solution Approaches

Abstract

In this research, a multi-objective mathematical model is proposed for the airline multi-skilled crew scheduling problem. The multi-skilled crew can be assigned to flights and airplanes according to their skills. The objective functions of the proposed model are: (1) Maximizing the number of leave days planned according to the days announced by the flight crew, and (2) Minimizing the penalty costs associated with violation of minimum and maximum working hours. Several test problems have been designed based on the data acquired by the airline studied in this research. Due to the NP-hard essence of the model, we have employed two meta-heuristics, namely the multi-objective differential evolution (MODE) and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). These algorithms are calibrated using the Taguchi method. The algorithms have been compared based on several multi-objective performance measures. Each algorithm has been more successful in terms of some metrics. The comparisons between algorithms and sensitivity analysis show that the proposed model and algorithms can produce appropriate schedules for the airline crew scheduling problem.

Keywords

• flight planning
• crew scheduling
• multi-objective optimization
• meta-heuristic algorithms