A Flight Rescheduling Support System Based on the Modeling of Flight Service

Abstract

It is a useful tactic that punctual flight services result in high customer satisfaction to against low cost carrier. However, today about 50% of flights are frequently delayed or canceled by irregulars. These irregulars must be dealt with by rescheduling to maintain a high-level customer satisfaction. Rescheduling is a highly complex problem since flight services have a large number of elements that are directly or indirectly involved in each other. And it is always dealt with by operator's implicit knowledge that is cultivated from his/her long experience. For these reasons, a flight rescheduling support system is strongly desired to support the difficult rescheduling problems. Our research proposes a support system of flight rescheduling. This system represents flight service as a service model consists of three sub services: (1) transportation service, (2) operation service, and (3) maintenance service. Based on the modeling of flight services, we focus on the relationships of flights to describe the rescheduling of flight service. Our research also proposes an algorithm of flight rescheduling by using these relationships. Then an automatic planning system and evaluation method for the flight rescheduling results is proposed to support operator's decision making. At last, a prototype system is shown as a case study by using an actual data of flight service.