Fair Cyclic Roster Planning—A Case Study for a Large European Airport

Abstract

Airport ground staff scheduling has been long known as one of the most challenging and successful application of operations research. In this presentation, we will concentrate on one type of rostering known as cyclic roster. Numerous aspects required in practice have to be taken into account, amongst others crew qualification, work locations and the travel time between each location, government regulations and labor agreements, etc. INFORM’s branch-and-price solution approach covers all of these aspects and is in use on many airports world-wide. Cyclic Rosters cover several fairness aspects by construction. In this case study we will discuss why one of our customers wanted to add additional fairness criteria to the roster. We show which new fairness requirements are needed. We present a fast local search post-processing step that transforms a cost optimal shift plan into a fair cyclic shift plan with the same costs. The transformed plans are highly accepted and are in operational use.