A new mathematical model for determining optimal workforce planning of pilots in an airline company

İbrahim Zeki Akyurt,Harish Garg,Muhammet Deveci,Yusuf Kuvvetli,Mert Yuzsever

doi:10.1007/s40747-021-00386-x

Abstract

This study aims to model a workforce-planning problem of pilot roles which include captain and first officer in an airline company and to make an efficient plan having maximal utilization of minimum workforce requirements. To tackle this problem, a mixed integer programming based a new mathematical model is proposed. The model considers different conditions such as employing pilots with different skill types, resignations, retirements, holidays of pilots, transitions between different skills regarding needs of the demands during the planning horizon. The application of the proposed approach is investigated using a case study with real-world data from an airline company in Turkey. The results show that a company can use transitions instead of new employment and this is a more suitable medium-term production and human resource planning decision.

Highlights

Airline companies face a number of challenges in their endeavour to ensure high efficiency in their operations [1]
To solve the proposed model, GAMS Optimization software with CPLEX mixed integer programming solver is used for building the mathematical model using a computer that has Intel i7 3.2 GHz and 16 GB RAM
It is hard to determine the number of pilots for an airline company due to some reasons

Summary

Introduction

Airline companies face a number of challenges in their endeavour to ensure high efficiency in their operations [1]. The manpower planning, which considers pilot staffing and tanning, is one of the most important and challenging problems facing major airlines [4] It involves the process of balancing the number of employees to be employed with the number of jobs demanded over the planning horizon [5]. A considerable rise has been noted regarding the number of airline planning problems owing to the increase in the number of passengers availing air transport in conjunction with the rapid growth of such companies [7]. To meet this demand, airlines consider airplane constraints and several other factors such as human resource planning. Due to the rapid growth of the airline industry, most airlines have

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion