Scheduling prowler training

The US Navy Prowler aircraft is designed for electronic surveillance and countermeasures. In this paper, we describe the problem of scheduling Prowler crew training, and we present two integer programming models to solve it. The first model maximizes the number of aviators trained above 75% in each mission area, subject to the available number of flights, over a single month. The second model distinguished peacetime from mobilization, and minimizes the number of flights done in mobilization subject to the available number of flights in peacetime. Our models distinguish different types of crew and allow more than one qualification to be earned on a given flight. We give numerical results using real data, comparing our results to the actual readiness of a squadron. We found that crew readiness of Prowler squadrons can be increased by 10%, simply by better scheduling.