Forecasting and Scheduling of Flight Deck Crew and Cabin Crew Headcount in SAUDIA Until 2025

Abstract

Manpower planning is one of the most important key functions in any organization. It deals with putting the right number and kind of the people, at the right time in the right place to achieve the organization’s objectives. It must be a system approach to plan the manpower in any organization. Flight deck crew and cabin crew are the heart of any airlines company. They need to be trained for months and years to be ready for their jobs. So, the airlines companies need to have a good manpower planning to forecast the future need and plan for their future. However, SAUDIA airlines has an ambitious plan to expand their network, open new destinations and increase the number of passengers per year in the near future. There are many factors was considered to predict the number of the needed cabin crew and the flight deck crew. Saudi Vision 2030 has a lot of ambitious plans to increase the number of pilgrims per year. Also, Saudi Vision 2030 focuses on the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia which will reflect on the demand for flights from and to Saudi Arabia. The study identified the needed manpower for the cabin crew and the flight deck crew until 2025 considering the monthly block hours for the last five years, percentage of augmented flight deck crew, type of the aircrafts, number of each type and the allowances as an input. The output was the number of the needed flight deck crew and the cabin crew till 2025. In addition, the future demand was predicted considering the plans in Saudi Vision2030. Network planning department in SAUDIA airlines was the source to collect relevant data. These data were analyzed using simple moving average forecasting. Additional to that, SAUDIA models were used to determine the needed manpower for the flight deck crew and the cabin crew until 2025. Finally, Saudi Vision2030 programs was considered in order to predict the future considering the present time events and their potential interaction. It is found that SAUDIA need to hire more captains, first officers, cabin managers and cabin attendants and prepare training plans to be ready for the future.