Air Force Crew Scheduling: An Integer Optimization Approach

Abstract

Air Force flight, training, and crew scheduling is a labor-intensive and largely manual process across all flying squadrons. Complex training requirements and dependencies, operational constraints, numerous qualifications, and unforeseen missions confound the schedule development process. We develop multiple optimization formulations for the Air Force crew scheduling problem. Furthermore, we present multiple objective functions aiming at mimicking reality to account for pilot qualification upgrades and their ability to stay current and mission ready. To compare candidate schedules, we identify numerous metrics that show the impact of the different objective functions. Finally, we briefly discuss how to incorporate scheduler preferences and focus on creating human-interpretable schedules so that the scheduler can select the most desired schedule for the squadrons' current needs.