This weeks product feature looks at an innovative option to create standby blocks as part of the optimization calculation that generates crew rosters.
Standbys. One of the biggest challenges in crew planning is trying to determine where to roster standby crew. These are crew that are not assigned to a specific flight but instead will be on duty either at home or an airport ready to be called out if needed. Obviously having a lot of standbys is good because it gives a lot of flexibility, but it’s also bad because it’s not a great use of crew time if they are not used. Many airlines build standby blocks in a specific way, sometimes by looking at previous instances of where they might be needed, to try and give good coverage. But this is a reactive way of creating standby plans.
Motulus has developed an innovative approach to creating standbys. Standbys can be created as predefined blocks of work in the traditional sense and then rostered alongside flights. Alternatively, standbys are created dynamically as part of the optimisation model. In this mode, the plan is defined by the maximum number of flights each standby can cover. The optimiser will then create standbys with different start times and different durations to ensure that every flight is covered by a standby block. Other best practices, like distributing standby across crew evenly or creating good buffers after the standby so that using one does not create a ripple or snowball effect across a roster, are still included.
This allows crew planning teams to be able to build bespoke standby plans month by month and allows them to get much greater coverage of standbys within their plan.
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