Table Of ContentDisruption management in the airline
industry
Carlotta Mariani
Mechanical Engineering
Submission date: June 2015
Supervisor: Nils Olsson, IPK
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Production and Quality Engineering
NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
FacultyofEngineeringScienceandTechnology
DepartmentofProductandQualityManagemet
DISRUPTION
MANAGEMENT IN THE
AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Master Thesis
in Aerospace Engineering
Supervisors: Student:
Prof. NILS OSSLON CARLOTTA MARIANI
Submission date
10 June 2015
Contents
1 Background 3
1.1 Problemstatementandlimitationsofthestudy . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Studypurpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Outlineofthereport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Methodology 7
2.1 Literaturereview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Airlinestructure 11
3.1 Strategy,businessmodelandtactical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.1.1 Sizeoftheaircraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1.2 Routenetworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1.3 Pricepolicy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1.4 Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.1.5 Organizationofoperationscontrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.1.6 Flightscheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.1.7 DelayMaintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1.8 Disruptionmanagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4 PlanningOperation 21
4.1 Planningprocess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1.1 Modelsforairlineoptimizationproblems . . . . . . . . . 23
4.1.2 Networkrepresentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2 Aircraftrouting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.3 Crewscheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5 Delay 33
5.1 Punctuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2 Modelsforcalculatingcostsofdelay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.3 Costevolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
i
6 Disruptionmanagement 45
6.1 Aircraftrecovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.2 Crewrecovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.3 Integratedrecovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.4 Classificationofthearchitecturesfortheairlineoperationsproblems 51
6.5 MatematicalModel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7 Analysisofsomeairlinedatas 57
7.1 Causeofdelay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.2 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.2.1 Puntuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.3 Passengerpointofview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.3.1 Travellingaboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8 NewTrendsOfTheAirlineIndustry 69
8.1 ImpactonTraffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.2 Changeintheservicesway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.3 Networkrestructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.4 Lookahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9 Conclusion 79
ii
List of Figures
1.1 FIG.1High-levelviewofdistruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1 FIG.2Representationofthearraysoftheargumentstreated . . . 8
3.1 FIG.3GeneralOverview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2 FIG.4Illustrationoftheschedulingofpassengers,aircraftandcrew 19
4.1 FIG.5Dailyoperationofanairline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.2 FIG.6SampleAirwithaircraftrotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3 FIG.7Thesamplescheduleshownasaconnectionnetwork . . . . 26
4.4 FIG.8Thesamplescheduleshownasatime-linenetwork . . . . . 27
4.5 FIG.9Representationoftheairlinecrewrosteringproblem. . . . . 31
5.1 FIG.10 Delay causes among all major U.S. airports in November
2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.2 FIG.11Theincreasingtrendindelayedflights . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.3 FIG.12InconvenienceasaFunctionofDelayExperienced. . . . . 41
5.4 FIG.13themodellingframework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.5 FIG.14Hypothesisedswitchingpropensitybydelayduration . . . 43
6.1 FIG.15OverviewofAircraftRecoveryProblemLiterature . . . . 48
6.2 FIG.16OverviewofCrewRecoveryProblemLiterature . . . . . 50
6.3 FIG.17OverviewofthearchitectureoftheDescartessystem. . . . 51
6.4 FIG.18 The sequential and interactive algorithm for aircraft and
crewrecoveryproblem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6.5 FIG.19AOCCdisruptionmanagementprocess . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.6 FIG.20MASarchitecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.1 FIG.21Totaldelayminutesduringtheyears . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.2 FIG.22Weather’sshareoftotaldelayminutesduringtheyears . . 59
7.3 FIG.23Numberofflights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.4 FIG.24Numberofflightseachweek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.5 FIG.25Weeklydistributionofthenumberofflight(barchart) . . . 62
iii
7.6 FIG.26Weeklydistributionofthenumberofflight . . . . . . . . 63
7.7 FIG.27AbsolutevalueofDelayforeachmonth . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.8 FIG.28WeeklyabsolutevalueofDelayforeachmonth . . . . . . 65
7.9 FIG.29WeeklyabsolutevalueofDelayforeachweek . . . . . . . 66
7.10 FIG.30Standarddeviationforeachmonth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.11 FIG.31Thesumofdelayminutesforeachday . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7.12 FIG.32Thepercentageofrelevantdelays . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.1 FIG.33AirTrafficSistemOperations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.2 FIG.34OverviewoftheelementATC,AOCandairplane. . . . . . 72
8.3 FIG.35OverviewoftheATM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
iv
List of Tables
3.1 Generaloverview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1 DirectcostsofdelaysintheU.S.airlineindustry[57]. . . . . . . . 35
5.2 Delaycostmanagementbyphaseofflight[58]. . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.3 Contextualdefinitionofunitandmarginalcosts[54]. . . . . . . . 39
5.4 Threecostscenariosforpassengerhardandsoftcoststotheairline
[58]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7.1 Pricefortravelingabroad(2013Nokfortime),ref.141 . . . . . . 65
v
Introduction
Air travel in Europe continues to grow at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, this growth
has not been matched by availability of capacity. The consequences of on-going
growth on the current European Air Traffic Management(ATM) system are re-
flected, in part, in delays and flight few efficiencies. The disconnected nature of
the European ATM system also hinders its ability to cope with the growth in the
airtraffic.
We have a main distinction between operations made by the operational centre
andbytheairlinecompany. Therealproblemisthecooperationandcoordination
of them. Successful operation of an airline depends on coordinated actions of all
supporting functions. Nevertheless, each unit, with its own budget and perfor-
mancemeasures,typicallyoperatesunderitsowninstruction.
Itisvitalintheattempttocontrollastminutechangesforcrewcontrollersand
theaircraftcontrollers’onlineinformation. Aplentyofabundanceofrelevantdata
issavedinthedatadepotoflargeairlines,andbyshowingthecorrectinformation
asquicklyaspossiblesubstantialsupportcanbegiventothecontrollers.
The system adjourns as new information about the flights become available,
thereby helping the controller to trace the ordinary status of his/her fleets. For
trans-Atlantic flights, satellite navigation can help the aircraft controller to pre-
servethetrackoftheactualpositionoftheflights. Forbusyairports,theoperation
of listen in on the communication between ATC and the aircraft for the aircraft
controllers. This can identify the position of an aircraft in the holding pattern,
therewith making it doable for the aircraft controller to come up with skilled val-
uationsofapossiblearrivaltime.
A lesser alternatives are usually left to other groups like crew and passenger
controllers. Theycanreceiveupdatedinformationbutonlybyqueryingtheinfor-
mation systems themselves thus the controller will dispatch querying commands
totherelevantsystemtogaintheinformationrequired.
1
Description:3.2 FIG.4 Illustration of the scheduling of passengers, aircraft and crew 19 . tual delays on the day of operations(the 'tactical' cost of delay). plan, and we bear in mind different authors and different solving problems and we.
