A Stochastic Airline Staff Scheduling Model with Risk Considerations that Minimizes Costs

Most staff planning for airline industries are done using point estimates; these do not account for the probabilistic nature of employees not showing up to work, and the airline company risks being under or overstaffed at different times, which increases costs and deteriorates customer service. This model proposes utilizing a stochastic method for American Airlines to schedule their ground crew staff. We developed a stochastic model for scheduling that incorporates the risks of absent employees and as well as reliability so that stakeholders can determine the level of reliability they want to maintain in their system based on the costs. We also incorporated a preferences component to the model in order to increase staff satisfaction in the schedules they get assigned based on their predetermined preferences. Since this is a general staffing model, this can be utilized for an airline crew or virtually any other workforce so long as certain parameters about the population can be determined.