How can operations research help to lessen airline economic and passenger woes?


Rising levels of airport congestion wreak havoc on airline operations, resulting in increased numbers of flight cancellations and delays, passenger dissatisfaction and airline economic losses.  We detail trends in the airline industry, and present some airline scheduling approaches aimed at reducing delays and/ or increasing airline profitability.  We present a dynamic scheduling and fleeting approach to adjust capacity in markets to match emerging demand patterns to increase the numbers of accommodated passengers.  Using data provided by a major U.S. carrier, we report the results of experiments to investigate the benefits of this approach.  We also consider the effects of robust routing of aircraft in which system slack time is reallocated to where it is most needed.  We present planning models to determine robust routes and conduct experiments with data provided by a major carrier to assess the impacts of these altered routes on operational schedule performance. 

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Cynthia Barnhart is a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  At M.I.T., Professor Barnhart has served as Co-Director of both the Center for Transportation and Logistics and the Operations Research Center.  She has developed and taught courses including Carrier Systems, Optimization of Large-Scale Transportation Systems, Airline Schedule Planning and The Airline Industry.  Professor Barnhart's research activities have focused on the development of optimization models and methods for designing, planning and operating transportation systems.  Her work has been published in several books and scholarly journals.  She currently serves or has served as Area Editor (Transportation) for Operations Research, as Associate Editor for Operations Research and for Transportation Science, as Director at Large for INFORMS, as President of the INFORMS Women in Operations Research/ Management Science Forum, and as the VP/ President Elect of the Transportation Science Section of INFORMS.  Professor Barnhart has been awarded the Franz Edelman Award (2nd prize) for Achievement in Operations and the Management Sciences, the Mitsui Faculty Development Chair, the Junior Faculty Career Award from the General Electric Foundation and the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation.