Flight rescheduling responding to large‐area flight delays

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on disruption management responding to large‐area flight delays (LFD). It is urgent for airways to reschedule the disrupted flights so as to relieve the negative influence and minimize losses. The authors try to reduce the risk of airline company's credit and economic losses by rescheduling flights with mathematic models and algorithm.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on flight classifications of real‐time statuses and priority indicators, all flights are prioritized. In this paper, two mathematic programming models of flight rescheduling are proposed. For the second model, an optimum polynomial algorithm is designed.

Findings

In practice, when LFD happens, it is very important for the airline company to pay attention to real‐time statuses of all the flights. At the same time, the disruption management should consider not only the economic loss but also other non‐quantitative loss such as passengers' satisfaction, etc.

Originality/value

In this paper, two mathematic programming models of flight rescheduling are built. An algorithm is designed and it is proved to be an optimum polynomial algorithm and a case study is given to illustrate the algorithm. The paper provides a theory support for airways to reduce the risk brought by LFD.

Citation

Gao, M., Chi, H., Xu, B. and Ding, R. (2012), "Flight rescheduling responding to large‐area flight delays", Kybernetes, Vol. 41 No. 10, pp. 1483-1496. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921211276693