[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ortrsc/v53y2019i5p1479-1499.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Combining Benders’ Decomposition and Column Generation for Integrated Crew Pairing and Personalized Crew Assignment Problems

Author

Listed:
  • Vahid Zeighami

    (Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal and GERAD, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3A7, Canada)

  • François Soumis

    (Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal and GERAD, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3A7, Canada)

Abstract
The airline crew scheduling problem, because of its size and complexity, is usually solved in two phases: the crew pairing problem and the crew assignment problem. A pairing is a sequence of flights, connections, and rests starting and ending at the same crew base. The crew pairing problem consists of determining a minimum-cost set of feasible pairings such that each flight is covered exactly once. In the crew assignment problem, the goal is to construct monthly schedules from these pairings for a given set of pilots and copilots independently, while respecting all the safety and collective agreement rules. However, this sequential approach may lead to significantly suboptimal solutions because it does not take into account the crew assignment constraints and objective during the building of the pairings. In this paper, first, we propose an extension of the crew pairing problem that incorporates pilot and copilot vacation requests at the crew pairing stage. Second, we introduce a model that completely integrates the crew pairing and crew assignment problems simultaneously for pilots and copilots. To solve this integrated problem, we develop a method that combines Benders’ decomposition and column generation. We conduct computational experiments with real-world data from a major U.S. carrier.

Suggested Citation

  • Vahid Zeighami & François Soumis, 2019. "Combining Benders’ Decomposition and Column Generation for Integrated Crew Pairing and Personalized Crew Assignment Problems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(5), pages 1479-1499, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:53:y:2019:i:5:p:1479-1499
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.2019.0892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2019.0892
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/trsc.2019.0892?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Souai, Nadia & Teghem, Jacques, 2009. "Genetic algorithm based approach for the integrated airline crew-pairing and rostering problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 199(3), pages 674-683, December.
    2. Desaulniers, G. & Desrosiers, J. & Dumas, Y. & Marc, S. & Rioux, B. & Solomon, M. M. & Soumis, F., 1997. "Crew pairing at Air France," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 245-259, March.
    3. Chunhua Gao & Ellis Johnson & Barry Smith, 2009. "Integrated Airline Fleet and Crew Robust Planning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 2-16, February.
    4. Shivaram Subramanian & Hanif D. Sherali, 2008. "An Effective Deflected Subgradient Optimization Scheme for Implementing Column Generation for Large-Scale Airline Crew Scheduling Problems," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 565-578, November.
    5. Atoosa Kasirzadeh & Mohammed Saddoune & François Soumis, 2017. "Airline crew scheduling: models, algorithms, and data sets," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 6(2), pages 111-137, June.
    6. Jean-François Cordeau & Goran Stojković & François Soumis & Jacques Desrosiers, 2001. "Benders Decomposition for Simultaneous Aircraft Routing and Crew Scheduling," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 375-388, November.
    7. Andrew J. Schaefer & Ellis L. Johnson & Anton J. Kleywegt & George L. Nemhauser, 2005. "Airline Crew Scheduling Under Uncertainty," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 340-348, August.
    8. Ahmad I. Z. Jarrah & James T. Diamond, 1997. "The Problem of Generating Crew Bidlines," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 49-64, August.
    9. Cynthia Barnhart & Rajesh G. Shenoi, 1998. "An Approximate Model and Solution Approach for the Long-Haul Crew Pairing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 221-231, August.
    10. Saddoune, Mohammed & Desaulniers, Guy & Elhallaoui, Issmail & Soumis, François, 2011. "Integrated airline crew scheduling: A bi-dynamic constraint aggregation method using neighborhoods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(3), pages 445-454, August.
    11. Mohammed Saddoune & Guy Desaulniers & Issmail Elhallaoui & François Soumis, 2012. "Integrated Airline Crew Pairing and Crew Assignment by Dynamic Constraint Aggregation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 39-55, February.
    12. Balaji Gopalakrishnan & Ellis. Johnson, 2005. "Airline Crew Scheduling: State-of-the-Art," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 305-337, November.
    13. Maenhout, Broos & Vanhoucke, Mario, 2010. "A hybrid scatter search heuristic for personalized crew rostering in the airline industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(1), pages 155-167, October.
    14. Michel Gamache & François Soumis & Gérald Marquis & Jacques Desrosiers, 1999. "A Column Generation Approach for Large-Scale Aircrew Rostering Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 247-263, April.
    15. Pamela H. Vance & Cynthia Barnhart & Ellis L. Johnson & George L. Nemhauser, 1997. "Airline Crew Scheduling: A New Formulation and Decomposition Algorithm," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(2), pages 188-200, April.
    16. Zeghal, F.M. & Minoux, M., 2006. "Modeling and solving a Crew Assignment Problem in air transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(1), pages 187-209, November.
    17. Stefan Irnich & Guy Desaulniers, 2005. "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," Springer Books, in: Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Marius M. Solomon (ed.), Column Generation, chapter 0, pages 33-65, Springer.
    18. Boubaker, Khaled & Desaulniers, Guy & Elhallaoui, Issmail, 2010. "Bidline scheduling with equity by heuristic dynamic constraint aggregation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 50-61, January.
    19. Ranga Anbil & Eric Gelman & Bruce Patty & Rajan Tanga, 1991. "Recent Advances in Crew-Pairing Optimization at American Airlines," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 62-74, February.
    20. Ira Gershkoff, 1989. "Optimizing Flight Crew Schedules," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 29-43, August.
    21. Rivi Sandhu & Diego Klabjan, 2007. "Integrated Airline Fleeting and Crew-Pairing Decisions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(3), pages 439-456, June.
    22. Villeneuve, Daniel & Desaulniers, Guy, 2005. "The shortest path problem with forbidden paths," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(1), pages 97-107, August.
    23. Robert E. Bixby & John W. Gregory & Irvin J. Lustig & Roy E. Marsten & David F. Shanno, 1992. "Very Large-Scale Linear Programming: A Case Study in Combining Interior Point and Simplex Methods," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(5), pages 885-897, October.
    24. Beasley, J. E. & Cao, B., 1996. "A tree search algorithm for the crew scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 517-526, November.
    25. Rahmaniani, Ragheb & Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Gendreau, Michel & Rei, Walter, 2017. "The Benders decomposition algorithm: A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(3), pages 801-817.
    26. Jeffery Weir & Ellis Johnson, 2004. "A Three-Phase Approach to Solving the Bidline Problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 283-308, March.
    27. Karla L. Hoffman & Manfred Padberg, 1993. "Solving Airline Crew Scheduling Problems by Branch-and-Cut," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(6), pages 657-682, June.
    28. Diego Klabjan & Ellis L. Johnson & George L. Nemhauser & Eric Gelman & Srini Ramaswamy, 2002. "Airline Crew Scheduling with Time Windows and Plane-Count Constraints," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 337-348, August.
    29. Ioannis T. Christou & Armand Zakarian & Jun-Min Liu & Helen Carter, 1999. "A Two-Phase Genetic Algorithm for Large-Scale Bidline-Generation Problems at Delta Air Lines," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 29(5), pages 51-65, October.
    30. Kevin W. Campbell & R. Bret Durfee & Gail S. Hines, 1997. "FedEx Generates Bid Lines Using Simulated Annealing," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 1-16, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wen, Xin & Chung, Sai-Ho & Ji, Ping & Sheu, Jiuh-Biing, 2022. "Individual scheduling approach for multi-class airline cabin crew with manpower requirement heterogeneity," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    2. Wen, Xin & Sun, Xuting & Sun, Yige & Yue, Xiaohang, 2021. "Airline crew scheduling: Models and algorithms," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    3. Ding, Chengjin & Chen, Xinyuan & Wu, Weiwei & Wei, Wenbin & Xin, Zelin, 2023. "Game-theoretic analysis of the impact of crew overnight hotel cost on airlines’ fleet assignment and crew pairing," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    4. Zeighami, Vahid & Saddoune, Mohammed & Soumis, François, 2020. "Alternating Lagrangian decomposition for integrated airline crew scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(1), pages 211-224.
    5. Frédéric Quesnel & Guy Desaulniers & Frédéric Quesnel, 2020. "Improving Air Crew Rostering by Considering Crew Preferences in the Crew Pairing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 97-114, January.
    6. Schrotenboer, Albert H. & Wenneker, Rob & Ursavas, Evrim & Zhu, Stuart X., 2023. "Reliable reserve-crew scheduling for airlines," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    7. Na Xie & Zhidong Liu & Xiqun (Michael) Chen & Shen Li, 2022. "Fair Assignment for Reserved Nucleic Acid Testing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-12, September.
    8. Philippe Racette & Frédéric Quesnel & Andrea Lodi & François Soumis, 2024. "Gaining insight into crew rostering instances through ML-based sequential assignment," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 32(3), pages 537-578, October.
    9. Zeren, Bahadır & Özcan, Ender & Deveci, Muhammet, 2024. "An adaptive greedy heuristic for large scale airline crew pairing problems," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    10. Wu, Weitiao & Lin, Yue & Liu, Ronghui & Jin, Wenzhou, 2022. "The multi-depot electric vehicle scheduling problem with power grid characteristics," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 322-347.
    11. Xu, Yifan & Wandelt, Sebastian & Sun, Xiaoqian, 2021. "Airline integrated robust scheduling with a variable neighborhood search based heuristic," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 181-203.
    12. van Rossum, B.T.C. & Dollevoet, T. & Huisman, D., 2024. "Railway crew planning with fairness over time," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 318(1), pages 55-70.
    13. Quesnel, Frédéric & Desaulniers, Guy & Soumis, François, 2020. "A branch-and-price heuristic for the crew pairing problem with language constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 1040-1054.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Atoosa Kasirzadeh & Mohammed Saddoune & François Soumis, 2017. "Airline crew scheduling: models, algorithms, and data sets," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 6(2), pages 111-137, June.
    2. Mohamed Haouari & Farah Zeghal Mansour & Hanif D. Sherali, 2019. "A New Compact Formulation for the Daily Crew Pairing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(3), pages 811-828, May.
    3. Mohammed Saddoune & Guy Desaulniers & Issmail Elhallaoui & François Soumis, 2012. "Integrated Airline Crew Pairing and Crew Assignment by Dynamic Constraint Aggregation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 39-55, February.
    4. Quesnel, Frédéric & Desaulniers, Guy & Soumis, François, 2020. "A branch-and-price heuristic for the crew pairing problem with language constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(3), pages 1040-1054.
    5. Saddoune, Mohammed & Desaulniers, Guy & Elhallaoui, Issmail & Soumis, François, 2011. "Integrated airline crew scheduling: A bi-dynamic constraint aggregation method using neighborhoods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(3), pages 445-454, August.
    6. Parmentier, Axel & Meunier, Frédéric, 2020. "Aircraft routing and crew pairing: Updated algorithms at Air France," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    7. Okan Örsan Özener & Melda Örmeci Matoğlu & Güneş Erdoğan & Mohamed Haouari & Hasan Sözer, 2017. "Solving a large-scale integrated fleet assignment and crew pairing problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 253(1), pages 477-500, June.
    8. Guy Desaulniers & François Lessard & Mohammed Saddoune & François Soumis, 2020. "Dynamic Constraint Aggregation for Solving Very Large-scale Airline Crew Pairing Problems," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 1-23, September.
    9. Zeighami, Vahid & Saddoune, Mohammed & Soumis, François, 2020. "Alternating Lagrangian decomposition for integrated airline crew scheduling problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(1), pages 211-224.
    10. Philippe Racette & Frédéric Quesnel & Andrea Lodi & François Soumis, 2024. "Gaining insight into crew rostering instances through ML-based sequential assignment," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 32(3), pages 537-578, October.
    11. Maenhout, Broos & Vanhoucke, Mario, 2010. "A hybrid scatter search heuristic for personalized crew rostering in the airline industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(1), pages 155-167, October.
    12. Jesica Armas & Luis Cadarso & Angel A. Juan & Javier Faulin, 2017. "A multi-start randomized heuristic for real-life crew rostering problems in airlines with work-balancing goals," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 258(2), pages 825-848, November.
    13. Zeren, Bahadır & Özcan, Ender & Deveci, Muhammet, 2024. "An adaptive greedy heuristic for large scale airline crew pairing problems," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    14. Frédéric Quesnel & Guy Desaulniers & Frédéric Quesnel, 2020. "Improving Air Crew Rostering by Considering Crew Preferences in the Crew Pairing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 97-114, January.
    15. Chunhua Gao & Ellis Johnson & Barry Smith, 2009. "Integrated Airline Fleet and Crew Robust Planning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 2-16, February.
    16. Boubaker, Khaled & Desaulniers, Guy & Elhallaoui, Issmail, 2010. "Bidline scheduling with equity by heuristic dynamic constraint aggregation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 50-61, January.
    17. Sebastian Ruther & Natashia Boland & Faramroze G. Engineer & Ian Evans, 2017. "Integrated Aircraft Routing, Crew Pairing, and Tail Assignment: Branch-and-Price with Many Pricing Problems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 177-195, February.
    18. Sai Ho Chung & Hoi Lam Ma & Hing Kai Chan, 2017. "Cascading Delay Risk of Airline Workforce Deployments with Crew Pairing and Schedule Optimization," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(8), pages 1443-1458, August.
    19. Cynthia Barnhart & Peter Belobaba & Amedeo R. Odoni, 2003. "Applications of Operations Research in the Air Transport Industry," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(4), pages 368-391, November.
    20. Yan, Shangyao & Chang, Jei-Chi, 2002. "Airline cockpit crew scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 501-511, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:53:y:2019:i:5:p:1479-1499. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.