AIRLINE SCHEDULING FOR THE TEMPORARY CLOSURE OF AIRPORTS

The poor scheduling of flights or a fleet resulting from temporary clo sure of airports may cause a substantial loss of profit and decreased levels of service for airline carriers. This research develops a frame work in order to help carriers handle schedule perturbations resulting from the temporary closure of airports. The framework is based on a b asic model constructed as a time-space network from which several stra tegic network models are developed for scheduling. These network model s are formulated as pure network flow problems or network flow problem s with side constraints. The former are solved using the network simpl ex method whereas the latter are solved using a Lagrangian relaxation- based algorithm. To test how well the model may be applied in the real world, a case study regarding the international operations of a major Taiwan airline was performed. The results show that the framework cou ld be useful in actual operations.