Genetic algorithm based approach for the integrated airline crew-pairing and rostering problem

Airline crew scheduling problem is a complex and difficult problem faced by all airline companies. To tackle this problem, it was often decomposed into two subproblems solved successively. First, the airline crew-pairing problem, which consists on finding a set of trips – called pairings – i.e. sequences of flights, starting and ending at a crew base, that cover all the flights planned for a given period of time. Secondly, the airline crew rostering problem, which consists on assigning the pairings found by solving the first subproblem, to the named airline crew members. For both problems, several rules and regulations must be respected and costs minimized. It is sure that this decomposition provides a convenient tool to handle the numerous and complex restrictions, but it lacks, however, of a global treatment of the problem. For this purpose, in this study we took the challenge of proposing a new way to solve both subproblems simultaneously. The proposed approach is based on a hybrid genetic algorithm. In fact, three heuristics are developed here to tackle the restriction rules within the GA’s process.