Balancing user preferences for aircraft schedule recovery during irregular operations

In this paper, the irregular operations problem is approached for the first time in a way that allows an airline to provide for schedule recovery with minimal deviations from the original aircraft routings. A network model with side constraints is presented in which delays and cancellations are used to deal with aircraft shortages in a way that ensures a significant portion of the original aircraft routings remain intact. The model is flexible, allowing user preferences in the objective, and thereby reflecting the immediate concerns of the decision-maker in the recovery schedule. The model can be tailored by airline operations personnel to emphasize differing solution characteristics. Fleet data provided by Continental Airlines are used to demonstrate the approach. Extensive testing indicates that optimal or near-optimal solutions are routinely obtained from the LP relaxation of the network formulation. When integrality is not achieved, a rounding heuristic is provided that finds feasible solutions within a small fraction of the optimum.