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.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1207526

Entities

People

  • Matthew J. Koch

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aeronautics
  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Commercial Aircraft
  • Commercial Aviation
  • Department Of Defense
  • Flight Training
  • Gantt Charts
  • Heuristic Methods
  • Literature Surveys
  • Maintenance Personnel
  • Multiobjective Optimization
  • Operations Research
  • Pilots
  • Scheduling (Production)
  • Simulators
  • Spreadsheet Software
  • Students
  • Training
  • United States

Readers

  • Aviation Science / Aeronautics.
  • Operations Research
  • Systems Analysis and Design