Orclever Proceedings of Research and Development

Airline Crew Hotel Assignment: An Optimization Framework for Fairness and Efficiency

Ahmet Cihat Baktir

Turkish Technology

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-8653-3888

Seyit Ulutaş

Turkish Technology

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5148-4664

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56038/oprd.v7i1.728

Keywords: crew scheduling, optimization, layover planning, fairness

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Abstract

Crew fatigue management is a critical aspect of airline operations, and layover scheduling plays a key role in ensuring the well-being of flight crew members. The increasing complexity of airline networks and availability of multiple hotels at stations necessitates the development of a framework leveraging efficient assignment of crew to the hotels. Besides efficiency, there are pre-defined rules that should be considered such as group-based assignment and maximum quota. In order to efficiently handle the assignment process, this study proposes a novel optimization framework with Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulation that ensures compliance with the associated rules. Meanwhile, the proposed optimization model prioritizes fairness among the hotels at the same station. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an extensive set of experiments are conducted using real-world airline data and the results are analyzed thoroughly. The experiments depict that the proposed optimization model can be solved efficiently within a short time frame, making it suitable for large-scale airline operations.

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