EFFICIENT HEURISTIC SOLUTIONS TO AN AIRLINE CREW SCHEDULING PROBLEM

This paper presents an application of efficient, heuristic solution procedures to the airline crew scheduling problem of the Federal Express Corporation. It is demonstrated that near-optimal solutions to this class of very large airline crew scheduling problems may be obtained by using heuristic procedures similar to those used in vehicle routing and scheduling. As a result of this research, the procedures developed here have been implemented and are in use, on a monthly basis, at the Federal Express Corporation. © 1979 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.