A Heuristic Algorithm for Solving Crew Rostering Problem

Abstract

Crew rostering is one of the most important scheduling problems for large airlines. In this study, a LP resolving algorithm in the B&B tree context and a heuristic for the IP solution of the crew rostering problem were proposed. The efficiency mainly comes from the special structure of the crew rostering problem. The computational experiments on the real-world problems showed that the time of the proposed resolving algorithm doesn't exceed 30% of that solves from scratch although the problem has largely changed, and the heuristic for the IP solution can rapidly get a sufficiently good scheme for all crew.