Heuristics for Scheduling Aircraft and Crew during Airlift Operations

The Air Force is frequently placed in a situation where a large quantity of goods must be transported between various locations in a specified time period by Air Force personnel. The goods are of different and interrelated types; thus, the sequence of missions is specified to maintain a proper balance of goods at each location. Other vital considerations include both aircraft maintenance and health and alertness maintenance for pilots and personnel. Nevertheless, economy in operations needs to be demonstrated. Thus, the problem addressed in this paper is one of minimizing the number of crews used in the airlift, subject to crew rest requirements and the completion of all missions within the specified time frame. It is assumed that all routes, missions, and aircraft are predefined with limited crew availability. Results of computational testing are provided where the proposed algorithms are compared to the current Air Force methods.