| Article ID: | iaor20002882 |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Volume: | 5 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Start Page Number: | 419 |
| End Page Number: | 436 |
| Publication Date: | Dec 1999 |
| Journal: | Journal of Heuristics |
| Authors: | Weinert T. Emden, Proksch M. |
| Keywords: | personnel & manpower planning, optimization: simulated annealing |
We report about a study of a simulated annealing algorithm for the airline crew pairing problem based on a run-cutting formulation. Computational results are reported for some real-world short- to medium-haul test problems with up to 4600 flights per month. Furthermore we find that run time can be saved and solution quality can be improved by using a problem specific initial solution, by relaxing constraints ‘as far as possible’, by combining simulated annealing with a problem specific local improvement heuristic and by multiple independent runs.