Team-oriented Airline Crew Scheduling and Rostering

In this work Markus P. Thiel introduces the Team-oriented Scheduling Problem (ToSP). ToSP shows that, independent from the assignment approach chosen (bidline systems, personalized rostering or preferential bidding systems) all serve to minimize cost, but none of these systems accounts for frequently changing team compositions throughout the day or from day-to-day. This results in crew members rarely getting a chance to know the strengths and weaknesses of their team-mates even though this may present critical safety issues such as cockpit emergencies. The author's emphasis is on the personalized rostering in the Team-oriented Rostering Problem (ToRP). Tailored to cockpit crew requirements several optimization models are examined. Based on a case study a set of solution approaches is presented. The implied trade-off between additional operational cost and the selected evaluation criteria for team orientation is assessed, along with further computational results embedded into a decision support system. This work greatly enhances existing concepts and solutions approaches for researchers and practitioners in the area of team scheduling.