Technical Program
Presentations
( Based on submitted abstracts to date*
)
A Heuristic Approach to Solving
the Aircraft Recovery Problem
Allan Larsen, Jesper Larsen,
Michael Love, Kim Riis Sorensen
Technical University of Denmark
The Aircraft Recovery Problem (ARP)
arises in situations where unforeseen events have disrupted the
existing aircraft schedules. The aircraft recovery problem aims
to recover the aircraft schedules through a series of re-assignments
of aircraft to flights, delaying of flights and cancellations of
flights. In this presentation we will present a heuristic which
is able to generate good quality aircraft schedules in less than
10 seconds. The presentation is based on results achieved in the
EU-funded DESCARTES project between British Airways, Carmen Systems
and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
Air Transport Management Course
for B.Sc. and M.Sc. Engineers
Eniko Legeza
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
The Study Plan is a combination of
M.Sc. and MBA knowledge specialized for air transport. The basic
subjects (1-2 semester) contain general educational material with
examples applied for air transport. The special subjects (3-4 semester)
have partly M.Sc., partly MBA character. This combination is relatively
new for engineers from different areas of air transport (airlines:
passenger and cargo), airport, air traffic control, aircraft maintenance…)
A Manpower Optimization Model For
Daily Activities Staff In Airport At Alitalia
Sara Santostefano, Beniamino Paoletti
Alitalia Airlines
Light maintenance consists of several
activities execution in accordance with specific quality, safety,
punctuality and regularity standards at competitive costs, to ensure
aircraft technical reliability and passenger comfort. An optimization
model has been developed to support sizing of resources to fulfill
manpower needs for such activities, taking into account different
kind of shifts, contracts and requested knowledge. It has been formalized
as a MIP problem in OPL environment; a multi-objective function
allows to get the minimum cost for manpower and to ensure the best
resources use with respect to different skills for each aircraft
type. The model can be performed both from an operational perspective,
related to planning resources, and from an organizational one, as
a support for within the company negotiations about staff rosters
and training plans.
An Improvement Heuristics for Supporting
the Tail Assignment Process at Airlines
Norbert Piotrowski
Lufthansa Systems
As a rule, Schedule Department at an
airline produces a timetable in which individual characteristics
of a single aircraft such as maintenance requirements or specific
restrictions are not fully considered. When the responsibility for
the schedule is passed over to the Operations Control Center, the
assignment to physical aircraft has to be done. Because of numerous
constraints for individual tails, there is a need to support this
step with an automated Tail Assigner. Such a tool integrated within
a complex network planning and control system will be presented.
In particular, used algorithms and interaction with user and other
system components will be discussed.
A Rotable Priority Control System
Mei Zhang, Tuell Green, Eric Gelman
American Airlines
In order to maintain an efficient fleet
service and control the inventory cost at the same time, the Rotable
Priority Control System distributes rotable parts to the line stations
with the most immediate need. A Station-by-Part risk is calculated
based on the forecast of the part removal and current inventory
at a station. Parts are distributed to and transferred from stations
based on this risk factor. The RPCS will improve the operational
performance of the inventory system and thereby reduce costs associated
with delays and cancellations related to part availability. More
accurate forecasting of removals and the ability for the system
to respond quickly will lead to reduction in inventory and carrying
costs.
Degradable Airline Scheduling
Laura S. Kang, John-Paul Clarke
MIT International Center for Air Transportation
Airlines need to delay and/or cancel
flights to reduce the "follow on" impact of delays. We present a
methodology for deriving an airline schedule that is robust from
a revenue perspective to the impact of unpredictable weather on
individual flights. This schedule is derived by dividing a current
airline scheduling into several independent schedules that are prioritized
on the basis of the revenue for all itineraries. The resulting degradable
airline schedule provides airlines with a delay/cancellation policy
and may enable airlines to separate the market based on passenger
preference for convenience and reliability. This problem is modeled
as an integer programming with solving procedures such as branch-and-price,
linear approximations and Pareto curves.
Descartes - The Final Frontier!!!
Nicki Davis, Sergey Tiourine
British Airways, Carmen Systems AB
For the third consecutive year Descartes
will be presented showing the progress that the consortium have
made over the last 12 months. The aim of this presentation will
be to give an update on where the project is at and where it is
going in its final year of funding (by the EU), but mostly it will
be in the form of a demonstration, with particular focus on the
dedicated aircraft recovery tool, and the dedicated passenger recovery
tool. We will also be demonstrating the integration of this suite
of systems to show how an integrated solution can be reached.
Evaluating Airline Schedules and
Schedule-Recovery Procedures for Improved Operational Dependability
Tuell Green, Jim Diamond
American Airlines
We present a multi-phased approach
to evaluate the operational dependability of a planned schedule
at American Airlines. The objective is to understand relationships
between schedule attributes and dependability that can be incorporated
into the schedule-optimization tools to explicitly account for dependability
and improve operational performance. A valuable bi-product of this
effort is a simulation-based environment in which many other issues
(OSO recovery procedures, crew pairing strategies, resource allocation
strategies, etc.) can be addressed and evaluated.
Impact of Airport Capacity Constraints
on the Structure of Hub Complexes
Elizabeth Bly, Terran Melconian, John-Paul Clarke
MIT International Center for Air Transportation
The primary goal of a hub complex is
to maximize the number of possible passenger connections. Ideally
this would be accomplished if all arrivals could land at the same
time and all departures could take off at the same time. In reality
however an airline must "spread out" its arrivals and departures
so that in total they do not exceed the capacity of the airport.
We present a methodology for determining the optimal arrival and
departure sequence given airport configuration, fleet mix, passenger
flow and maximum allowable arrival delay.
Increasing Robustness of Flight
Schedules through Stochastic Modelling of Planning Parameters
Dr. Michael Mederer, Michael Frank
Deutsche Lufthansa AG
While airspace and airport infrastructure
become a major bottleneck for flight operations, optimized flight
schedules tend to be increasingly tight. Therefore, the primary
delay and the resulting delay propagation have a negative economical
impact shattering the theoretically achievable optimum. Choosing
robust planning parameters (blocktimes, groundtimes, buffers, etc.
) and exploring their highly complex interactions with parameters
such as passenger- and crew transit times becomes an essential task
for the stochastic optimization process. An analytic modelling approach
will be introduced that makes it possible to evaluate different
methods of planning parameter generation for their schedule robustness
and economical impact.
Integrating Planning and Operations
Ellis Johnson
ISYE - Georgia Institute of Technology
Obstacles to integrating operational
considerations into the planning process include the silo mentatlity
that pervades the planning process. In addition, there are few models
that realistically include both. In theory, the combined problem
is one big stochastic, integer program. We discuss some possible
strategies and validation using SimAir.
Light Maintenance Scheduling, An
Optimal Way To Schedule And Assign Tasks
Carlo Del Castello, Marco Carcieri, Beniamino Paoletti
Alitalia Airlines
This model is the first of a Two-Step
approach to the Light Maintenance Assignment/Scheduling problem.
The double step conception of overall tool provides a Predictive
Scheduler, to give an "a priori" solution for a time window, and
a Reactive Scheduler able to adjust in operative phase the last
solution each time necessary. Basically, all tasks and light activities
related to the transits have to be performed by available resources.
A general solution is an assignment of every activity to the resources
taking into account constraints based on rules (resource shifts,
meal breaks, required skills, etc.) and a scheduling of the same
activities taking care of transit duration. Predictive Scheduler
tries to get the best solution in order to ensure as much as possible
regularity, punctuality, equal workloads and it works thanks to
an "ad hoc" algorithm that uses two mathematics model formalised
as mixed integer linear problems with a multi-objective function.
Linear Programming and the Pursuit
of Happiness: Minimizing the Number of Disgruntled Passengers
Wolfram Schlickenrieder, Gilbert Wittwer
EDS Switzerland / Airline Competence Centre
In this presentation we will take a
close look at different stages of the scheduling process from a
mathematical modeling perspective. Starting from rotations, we will
take a stroll through a closely related collection of optimization
models designed for rotation building, aircraft assignment, and
schedule recovery. If no other solution can be found, our model
suggests a set of cancellations that minimizes the number of disappointed
passengers
Optimization for Hierarchical Objectives
During Ground Delay Programs
Lourdmareddy Gumireddy, Ilhan Ince
USAirways
When weather or other conditions reduce
airport capacity, FAA issues a Ground Delay Program to match demand
with the reduced capacity by reducing the number of arrival slots.
Airlines then assign flights to these slots to minimize degradation
of some of their objectives such as on time arrival performance,
passenger delays and misconnects, crew delays, maintenance requirements,
cancellations, etc. There is no single optimal solution as these
objectives can be conflicting and moreover airlines can have different
objectives on different days of the year. This presentation describes
an optimization model that quickly provides multiple options and
trade-offs between corporate objectives.
Simulation in Practice
Jerry Banks
Georgia Institute of Technology
Airline operations is a fertile area
for simulation codes as tools for understanding procedures and consequences.
Nevertheless, care is needed in modeling and analysis. This talk
gives some practical guidelines as to when simulation is appropriate,
level of detail to capture, how to assure that analysis based on
the simulation is valid, and generally how to use it as an analytic
tool. Some of the simulations in current use in airline operations
and control will be mentioned along with some classifications as
to what they attempt to accomplish.
Suite Of Optimization Model For
Resource Management
Marco Carcieri, Beniamino Paoletti
Alitalia Airlines
The management of human resources is
a sequence of decisional processes. In this presentation, we discuss
about flow of processes involved with Resources Management, from
planning phase to daily management one. In particular it deals with
the management of resource characterized by 16-24 hh shifts and
then it means to be suitable for several types of services identifiable
in each airline company (for example maintenance staff, ramp staff,
ground staff, call center, etc…). Alitalia OR Department has provides
a set of optimization models for some of processes to manage and
control economic costs, service quality and robustness in employing
resources.
Virtual Hubs: A Schedule Recovery
Approach
Michelle Karow, John-Paul Clarke
MIT International Center for Air
Transportation
Inclement weather at an airline hub
airport generates a schedule recovery problem of reallocating flights
in real-time. By shifting connecting banks to strategically located,
under-utilized airports during these irregular operations, the airline
can reduce costs and aircraft delays relative to current industry
rescheduling practices. These proposed virtual hubs will host select
connecting traffic shifted from the original hub with the objective
of minimizing system passenger delays. A linear program is used
to allocate connecting flights and their corresponding passengers
to either hub over time windows spanning the period of irregularity
subject to the available capacity at the original and virtual hub
airports.
Vendor Presentations
Improving the Financial and Operational
Effectiveness of an Airlines SOC
Kelvin Palmer, Bill Milne
Avient Technologies - Honeywell
Honeywell have spent considerable
time examining the operational effectiveness of airlines SOC (System
Operations Control or Operations Control Centre).Honeywell is now
in a position to share its experiences and provide solutions that
address how airlines can help themselves in the face of mounting
constraints and rising expectations
The New CALEB Technologies
Benjamin Thengvall, Nader Kabbani
Caleb Technologies
CALEB Technologies Corp. has undergone
exciting changes this past year. In this presentation organizational
changes will be disclosed as well as our product roadmap and vision.
New products and product enhancements will be unveiled, along with
our plans for the coming year. An update will also be provided on
our current clients and projects and our new delivery methods.
Carmen Systems AB
Tomas Larrson
Carmen System AB
Carmen Systems AB develops and implements
resource optimization solutions for demanding transportation operations.
In 2001 Carmen grew with 50% under profit, increasing the turnover
to 12 MUSD. Since last year’s AGIFORS meeting Carmen has 1) established
its position on the railway market by taking rostering for Deutsche
Bahn into production, 2) expanded into the Asian market by delivering
outsourcing of crew pairing to Singapore Airlines, and 3) released
three new optimzation products for integrated operations control:
Carmen Fleet Recovery Solver, Carmen Crew Recovery Solver and Carmen
Passenger Recovery Solver.
LogisTechs - Expect Results
Alan Denton, Craig Ballard
LogisTechs
An introduction to LogisTechs, its
business process and spares optimization system "k2s" Knowledge
to Spare, based on the Vari-Metric algorithms for Marginal Analysis
developed by Dr. Craig Sherbrooke. The traditional methods of spares
analysis are examined and compared to the software based optimization
methodology. The algorithms, long used for sparing military systems,
deliver the cost optimal spares mix to maximize aircraft availability
for any given spares budget. A case study examining the difference
in performance achieved by Optimal sparing versus traditional methods
shows benefits of 20% lower spares investment, coupled with 50%
reductions in AOG and Part Shortage events.
NetLine/Ops - The operation control
system from Lufthansa Systems
Hans Joachim Reusch
Lufthansa Systems
NetLine/Ops as the operation control
system of the NetLine product suite will be introduced. The new
operating carrier concept inside NetLine/Ops, which is the ideal
IT support for airlines combined in an alliance, will be explained.
A cost benefit example will be shown, and a preview on future developments
of NetLine/Ops will be given.
Predictive Management- Boeing's
Toolset for Airline Operational Cost Reduction
John Lord, Jim Kinneally, Jennifer Ashley
Preston Aviation Solutions (Boeing)
Boeing is combining its considerable
expertise in the airline industry with the products and capabilities
of its subsidiaries Jeppessen SBS International and Preston Aviation
Solutions to create an integrated, predictive management toolset
for airlines and airports. Predictive management provides real time
information with powerful look ahead capability to give operators
proactive decision support in flight ops, flight tracking and rerouting
crew scheduling, airport resource allocation, and staff and equipment
utilization.
Sabre's Flight Operations Portfolio
Apurva Mathur
Sabre Inc.
Over the years, Sabre has developed
robust tools to manage the Airline's Flight Operations automation
requirements. Sabre's main product offering is the Movement Control
system, SabreÒ AirOpsÔ providing a real-time display of the airlines
operations with extensive alerting, maintenance control and Euro
slot management functionality. The system also provides airlines
with a real-time optimization based Decision Support System (DSS)
capability and an enhanced Maintenance Routing Model (MRM) for optimal
aircraft utilization. Sabre, through significant product enhancement
investments over the next 3 years, is creating a new architectural
framework for its Flight Operations product suite. In addition,
Sabre through the acquisition of David R Bornemann & Associates,
has greatly increased the depth of its product offering in Flight
Operations.
The Application of Decision Support
in a current Operations Environment
Paul Rainford
SITA
The current climate within the aviation
industry has placed financial pressures on all airlines to a greater
or lesser degree, depending on their location. Never has it been
more important to identify problems or potential problems affecting
an operation, make the correct decisions rapidly, effectively and
in a cost efficent manner and then communicate those decisions to
the people that make them happen in the field - be it internal departments
or external contractors. The use of decision support, such as SITA's
FleetWatch system, enables both cost effective and consistent resolution
to problems encountered in the routine day-to-day operations environment.
* Technical
Program is subject to change
Call for papers
Come and share with us your ideas,
thoughts, current trends, philosophies, and latest technological
advances on topics ranging from airport security, airport systems,
ground resource management, maintenance, tactical planning, and
operations control. If you are interested in presenting at the study
group meeting, please complete the required form, and return it
to Tim Niznik via email or fascimile. As always, talks are
subject to approval, and time slots are available on a first come,
first serve basis - so if you are interested, act now!
The AGIFORS
Airline Operations 2002 conference technical program is currently
being put together, for more information please contact tim.niznik@aa.com.
Please refer to previous
years conference proceedings for a complete listing of technical talks
given in the past at AGIFORS Airline Operations
meetings.
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