Welcome reception at the Selleny Bar, Hilton Vienna Park

Welcome

by Marcel Sol 

Opening Keynote 

by Peter Malanik - Managing Director Aviation Industry Austria

Technical presentation: Unlocking Crew Optimization Potential with AI Agents

by Viktor Forsman

Crew planning systems have powerful optimization engines, yet answering questions such as “Can we reduce deadheading without sacrificing too much productivity?” still requires specialist knowledge and time. Experienced business analysts are difficult to find and retain, and often overwhelmed with work. Translating business questions into experiments and interpreting the trade-offs is time-consuming, resulting in many questions being left unanswered and crew rosters misaligned with business needs.

In this talk, we explore how an AI agent connected to an existing crew optimizer can help with this process. Starting from a question in natural language, the agent identifies relevant parameters and KPIs, proposes and executes experiments, compares results, and makes recommendations based on the trade-offs. By automating much of this work, we give planning teams more capacity to investigate alternatives and more evidence to guide their decisions—so the value of a powerful optimizer is less constrained by the time available to operate it.

Coffee break

Technical presentation: Improving Crew Duty Swap Success Through Predictive Modeling

by Dr. Amine Amrouss

Duty swaps are essential for crew wellbeing, allowing members to adjust schedules to accommodate personal and family commitments. However, the success rate of swap requests remains low due to mandatory roster rules and the need to find eligible and willing counterparts. This presentation introduces a predictive scoring model designed to enhance swap success by analyzing historical behavior, roster preferences, and contextual factors. The model ranks potential swap matches based on predicted willingness, enabling more efficient and successful exchanges. Early results show measurable improvements in swap acceptance rates, highlighting the potential to enhance crew flexibility, satisfaction, and work–life balance.

IBS sponsor presentation

Rois sponsor presentation

Technical presentation: Quantum Annealing for Airline Crew Trip and Schedule Planning

by Mario Guzzi

Demonstrating a practical path for applying quantum annealing to airline crew planning, showing how realistic operating crew cost estimates can be derived directly from schedules even without a fully completed trip and assignment planning flow. The approach addresses both crew trip construction and crew schedule assignment by sequencing flight segments into feasible trips using explicit operational constraints and trip-start logic, followed by a quantum-based assignment of trips to crews. Both problems are formulated as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) models and executed on D-Wave quantum annealers, with hybrid solvers used for comparison.

Lunch 

Jeppesen ForeFlight sponsor presentation

Technical presentation: Manpower Planning 2030: A Debate on the Possible, the Impossible, and the Inevitable

by Lana Jansen, Franziska Burmester

In this interactive debate, two planning experts challenge each other with bold hypotheses about the future of manpower planning—some visionary, some provocative, and some deliberately unrealistic. Together they explore how AI‑driven automation, real‑time data, and deep vertical and horizontal integration may redefine long‑term planning in aviation.
The session examines whether concepts like cross‑departmental resource harmonization, end‑to‑end planning continuity, and the emergence of a “virtual planner” are feasible innovations or futuristic fantasies. As the speakers argue which ideas will truly fly, participants gain insight into the technological, cultural, and organizational transformations that could shape next‑generation workforce planning.

Technical presentation: Autonomous orchestration of third-party optimisation engines for airline crew planning

by Meherzad (Maz) Lakadia

Optimisation engines are widely used in airline crew planning to generate solutions under operational constraints and business priorities. In practice, decision-making rarely relies on a single optimisation run. Analysts execute multiple scenarios to explore trade-offs, assess parameter sensitivity, and justify outcomes for specific operational contexts.
This calibration and scenario management process is typically performed manually by specialised analysts, becoming increasingly time-consuming as operations grow in scale or complexity. Modern engines efficiently solve individual problems, but much of the surrounding exploratory work remains outside the optimiser.
This presentation describes an autonomous orchestration approach applied to a commercial third-party crew planning optimisation engine. The orchestration layer operates externally, treating the optimiser as a black box and interacting only through its standard interface. It autonomously decides which optimisation runs to execute, adjusts parameters, rules, and input data across scenarios within allowable bounds, and determines when sufficient solution quality has been achieved. The system automates multi-scenario sensitivity analysis and trade-off exploration in a single end-to-end workflow.
Although demonstrated for crew planning, the methods are optimiser-agnostic and grounded in established OR and meta-optimisation techniques. The approach produces structured, human-readable insights that reduce manual analyst effort and improve the speed and consistency of optimisation-driven decision-making.

Coffee break 

API sponsor presentation

Technical presentation: Beyond the Spreadsheet: Revolutionizing Crew HOTAC Procurement through AI-Driven Ecosystems

by Hermann Wagner

In the high-stakes world of airline operations, the procurement and management of crew accommodations (HOTAC) remains one of the last frontiers for true digital transformation. For too long, the industry has relied on fragmented, manual processes and outdated legacy systems that struggle to keep pace with dynamic market shifts.
This session explores how integrating AI-Agent technology and automated end-to-end processes is fundamentally reshaping the partnership between airlines and hotels. We will delve into the transition from static, cumbersome RFP cycles to a transparent, compliant collaboration model that leverages real-time data and intelligent automation.
Key discussion points include:
- The Evolution of the RFP: AI-supported "one-click" tender responses that reduce operational overhead for both airlines and hotel groups.
- Agentic Innovation in Operations: A deep dive into how specialized AI Agents—from RFP creation agents to automated invoice reconciliation—eliminate manual errors and optimize profitability.
- Streamlining the "Irregular": How the ecosystem automates passenger and crew disruption (layovers), transforming a high-stress manual task into a seamless, API-driven experience.

Technical presentation: Simplify Crew Rule Management with Natural Language

by Peter Gyulai

Crew Management legality rules are at the heart of aviation software: from pairing construction and rostering to crew control, almost every application relies on rule checks to ensure that complex business, contractual, and regulatory requirements are met. Yet validating these rules with traditional software-testing methods can require a substantial share of development effort and often remains closely tied to developer workflows.
This presentation explores an alternative approach: describing rule test cases in natural language. By making test scenarios readable and writable without programming expertise, the approach enables business experts, testers and even airlines to participate directly in defining, reviewing, and maintaining rule validation. This supports a shared understanding of expected behavior while retaining the precision needed for technical rule testing.
We will discuss the concept, its practical benefits and limitations, and how natural-language test definitions can provide a foundation for future generative-AI support, including AI-assisted creation of test cases and, as a next step, assistance in developing the rules themselves.

Technical presentation: AirSpec - Aviation Interpreted Rules Specification

by Meherzad Lakadia, Viktor Forsman

AirSpec aims to provide an open, community-driven specification for crew rules and payroll for vendors and airlines. As we all know, implementing new crew tracking or optimisation systems incurs significant time and cost simply from translating rules between formats or systems. LLMs may reduce this effort, but as seen in other domains (e.g., programming), LLMs perform best when given a well-defined "end state" to translate requirements into. Instead of every airline and vendor implementing different systems to document / interpret rules, we wanted to provide a specification everyone could follow. AirSpec gives a way to create a "single source of truth" pulled from multiple locations (regulations, EBAs, company practices). Vendors then simply need to write one adapter to convert AirSpec into their specific rule engine's format.
AirSpec as a free and open source standard that airlines and vendors can build upon.

Networking dinner at the Lenz Restaurant, Hilton Vienna Park 

Recap day 1

Technical presentation: The next step in the journey from EI to AI: capturing (useful) feedback from crew.

by Steven Rushworth

At a previous AGIFORS Symposium, I presented findings from my research and discussions with crew communities on the impact of rostering on lifestyle and wellbeing. Building on that foundation, this presentation explores the further practical developments in this area.

It will review recent studies, relevant literature, and industry presentations on the subject. The session will also examine how shifting generational attitudes are reshaping perspectives on work, and the relationship individuals have with their careers.
Most importantly, it will outline and showcase a method for capturing meaningful, dynamic feedback from crew regarding their rosters — and how this feedback can be integrated into the rostering system to drive continuous improvement.

TA Connections sponsor presentation

WePlan sponsor presentation

VeeOne sponsor presentation

Coffee break

Technical presentation: From Combinatorial Search to Sequential Validation: Achieving Real-Time Assignment in Preferential Bidding Systems

by Vigith Kartha, Mangesh Adgaonkar

Traditional airline PBS is NP-hard, requiring slow Branch-and-Price combinatorial search and resulting in opaque, batch-oriented bidding and crew dissatisfaction. This paper proposes a shift to a List-Based, Sequential Validation Assignment. By converting generic rules into a pre-sorted pairing list, the algorithm bypasses the time-consuming Pricing Problem of Column Generation. This breakthrough achieves speeds that make Interactive PBS (IPBS) operationally feasible, enabling continuous feedback. IPBS maximizes transparency, empowers crew to adjust bids, and directly enhances crew satisfaction. This List-Based approach advocates for a new standard in operational efficiency.

KLM+BCG sponsor presentation 

Lunch

get-e sponsor presentation

Lufthansa Systems sponsor presentation

Biarri sponsor presentation

Unframe sponsor presentation

Social programme 

Meet-up 15:45 at the hotel reception