The Effective Assignment of Flight Sectors to Crew - Essay Example

Roster patterns have always proved to be one of the most challenging problems in airline planning. Besides fuel costs, crew costs represent the largest single cost factor for the airline and with the right planning airlines can control these costs (Evans, 2005). The objective is to find a roster pattern that incurs minimal costs whilst covering all the trips in the schedule. Hence, the effective assignment of flight sectors to crew forms an important aspect of the airline roster planning. This paper will discuss the various aspects involved within this process and the numerous roster patterns being applied and the affect each pattern has on the airline operation. Crew schedule pairing involves crew pairing and crew assignment. Crew pairing covers the personnel needs of each flight by providing work schedules that minimize costs (Doerner, Kotsis & Strauss, 2003). This also allows consideration of restrictions and crew availability. Crew assignment links crew pairings with leave, rest period, training time. This takes into account the rest period between flights and also the regulations imposed by different agencies, collective bargaining agreements and labor unions. The crew assignment process differs according to the strategy used. Crew scheduling can lead to substantial amount of savings. The primary goal of rostering is to provide an equitable distribution of the workload among the crew members while maximizing their satisfaction which depends on their individual duty schedules (Doerner, Kotsis & Strauss, 2003). Pilots can bid for the roster based on seniority and other considerations. There are several types of rostering that can be performed and the choice of rostering can impact the lifestyle of a pilot and the number of crew required for a flight. The most common type of rostering of a crew is where the crew is paid a fixed amount per roster period and in return the airline rosters the crew up to a certain amount of work hours before the overtime is required (Evans, 2005). This would be an ideal roster where the maximum numbers of hours are used with minimum crew and minimum costs. This does not happen in actual practice. Fair share rostering would grant equal number of hours per crew member which may be almost an ideal situation but in my opinion consideration should be given to the number of years of experience in flying. Besides, fair share rostering does not allow maximizing the efficiency of the airline as concentration is on fair share and not on optimizing the airline resources. Preferential share rostering on the other hand takes into account the crew preferences. This is certainly required but again would have to determine what preferences should be recognized without compromising on airline optimality. For instance, some members may prefer to fly early while some prefer late flights. This factor can generally be accepted but trying to accommodate all the constraints and preferences for the airline may not be feasible. Preferential bidding has a large impact on the number of crew required for flying as it is based on the pairings to be rostered and the employment conditions. This would mean giving preference to certain crew members based on predefined criteria. Swiss Air for instance has systematized its roster planning and now stipulates five years’ flying experience for promotion to captain (Swiss, 2004). To a certain extent this is beneficial specially if this is linked to the number of years of service but chances are that the high priority bidders would opt for maximizing their days off. In this pattern the high priority bidders would have extra days off while the utilization of the low priority bidders would be low and more number of crew would be required. This is not a cost effective solution where the airline is unable to optimize crew pairing. The criteria for priority should be such that majority of the crew are able to benefit out of it. In bid line rostering also the airline first draws up a roster and then allows the crew to bid. This becomes impractical to impose because crew members may have leave due to them or other commitments. This would render the bid line ineffective. Planning the roster for the crew proves to be a huge task for the planner in terms of fairness in hours, days off etc... Having many hours of operations allocated for the fleet, and no proper rostering procedures with continuous changes of equipment, makes it practically impossible to fly the given roster pattern. Had there been fairness of distribution of the flights and proper allocation of days off, the situations at hand would have been different. Rosters should never be planned to suit each individual crew member’s needs. This has a lot of negative impacts on the roster planning process. Also by doing so, the airline will be subject to extra costs, more crew, less leave and repetitive patterns allocated. Pilots may have constraints and these set of constraints should be recorded. Tasks and roster should be matched to an employee who has the necessary qualifications. A task based roster will be able to take into account the total demand as well as the constraints related to individuals, shifts, demand, and task allocations. When there is a demand for employees with different qualifications, this would help. Such a roster would help produce a roster with the right qualified employees at the right time and place. If the rules, restrictions and individual constraints depending on individual life style are incorporated, the time for needed for generating the roster and the pilots too is satisfied. When the number of administration steps is reduced, costs are automatically reduced. Crew should submit their bids, with a log made for all the bids and patterns being appointed so that everyone would have a different pattern of flying every month while to a certain extent satisfying the crews’ requests. This would maximize the efficiency of the airline while adding fairness in terms of patterns, leave allocations, flying hours and days off. Flexibility leads to inequality and it is virtually impossible to make a roster suiting every crew member’s needs. My experience also tells me that even after the roster is published, duty swaps and minor changes do occur. If the roster is published too much in advance, chances of changes are higher. At the same time, publishing the roster at the last minute does not give time to the crew to prepare themselves. Preferential bidding system of all the patterns is ideal which to a large extent satisfies the crews’ requests and maintains the efficiency required by the airline. With preferential bidding, the airline would be able to cater for its required specific needs and the crews’ needs as well. With a complex agreement structure and additional quality and stability criteria it would be very hard to find the most efficient roster combinations manually. Good optimization may lead to room for improvement leading to reduction of costs, increasing stability, and producing a better roster. Optimization makes sure the best available schedules are being awarded at all seniority levels. It is also possible to raise crew satisfaction while maintaining costs and stability. Flexibility does lead to inequality for more than one reason. Lifestyles of people differ as do their tastes and preferences. On the other hand, each independent group of people has their own customs, values and ways of life. This is reflected in the airlines having their own business processes whilst pilots and flight attendants have unique agreements. Therefore, a need exists for this general trend supporting individuality and crew members’ preferences. The people behind the planning process need to understand the uniqueness of a specific airline and its crew. What also need’s to be understood is how each crew member expresses personal preferences and how these preferences might relate to each other. An efficient system has to be developed improving the company’s stability which can be easily embraced by the crew themselves. A balance should be acquired in terms of lifestyle of the crew member and operational efficiency of the airline. Feed back plays a very important role in the above process to have a general understanding of how the operation can be improved. Being a crew member is stressful, as it requires coping with time differences, delays and jet lag. As far as the airline is concerned, crew form the major back bone of the operation. The airline also needs to make sure that the crew are undergoing their necessary rest and flying according to duty time limitations maintaining the highest forms of safety. The process of roster planning, flying hours, and allocations of different flight times are inter-related. The crew has to be taken care of in the most feasible ways while carrying out smooth continuous operations. As a crew member, I also understand the need of the airline operation and know that I cannot take time off at my will. I do understand that I may need to be away from home for weeks at a time, but I have managed to work my life around it. This is a profession which requires immense sacrifice, and we do expect that to some extent a fair and smooth roster would help to alleviate the pitfalls of the profession. References: Doerner, K., Kotsis, G., & Strauss, C., (2003), ROSTERBUILDER: AN ARCHITECTURE FOR AIRLINE ROSTERING, Information Technology & Tourism, Vol. 6 pp. 69–83 Evans, I., (2005), Impact of type of rostering on crew requirements, Constraint Technologies, 18 May 2007 Swiss., (2004), Miles & More, Swiss International Airlines, 18 May 2007 Read More