Evolving efficient airline schedules

Abstract

This project is to solve the fleet scheduling problem for a large airline. This requires matching each fight in a schedule to a plane in the fleet that will fly the scheduled flight on a particular day. This thesis shows how to use the network flow model of a flight schedule in order to find the smallest fleet required to fly a schedule without dropping any flights. This is done by pruning the whole network to a smaller set of more relevant arcs. It is also the goal of the project to perform these tasks without requiring a large powerful computer or workstation.