Simulated annealing for the multi-objective aircrew rostering problem

The aircrew rostering problem entails the assignment of crew members to planned rotations. Airline companies have the monthly task of constructing personalized monthly schedules (rosters). The paper attempts to solve the aircrew rostering problem as a multi-objective optimization problem, thus constructing personalized monthly schedules on the basis of several criteria. The proposed algorithm to solve the aircrew rostering problem contains two steps. The first step uses the ‘pilot-by-pilot’ heuristic algorithm to generate an initial feasible solution. The second step uses the simulated annealing technique for multi-objective optimization problems to improve the solution obtained in the first step. The paper develops two models to improve the initial solution obtained in the first step. The developed models are tested on a numerical example whose dimensions are characteristic of small- and medium-sized airline carriers. The other examples on which the models are tested are randomly generated.