Airline Schedule Recovery

In the previous chapter, the impact of flight delay and cancellation on the air carrier schedule is investigated. We have seen that a delay or cancellation of one or more flights in the air carrier schedule can have a significant diverse impact on other downline flights in the schedule. It is important for the air carrier to determine this impact ahead of time so that possible actions can be taken to alleviate its effect on the schedule. Consider the example of the hypothetical air carrier network discussed in the previous chapter, and presented here in Figure 20.1. Assume flight F1 is scheduled to depart at 8:00 AM and is delayed for departure until 9:00 AM. Assume also that at some time before 8:00 AM, this air carrier finds out about this delay, say at 7:30 AM. At 7:30 AM, the air carrier can perform an exercise to predict the impact of delaying the departure time of flight F1 from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Assume that flight F1 is feeding a pilot resource, R_F1F3, to flight F3, which has a slack time of S_F1F3. Since the pilot, R_F1F3, is delayed, flight F3 also has to be delayed. The amount of delay of flight F3 depends on the slack time S_F1F3. Assume that flight F3 is delayed for 45 minutes until the pilot, R_F1F3, gets ready for the flight. The new arrival time for flight F3 is 2:30 PM, as shown in Figure 20.1. Upon the arrival of flight F3, it feeds the pilot resource, R_F3F6, to flight F6. Since flight F3 is delayed, flight F6 is delayed while waiting for its resource, R_F3F6. The delay of flight F6 is shown in Figure 20.1.