Table of Contents

Rotation Planning for the Continental Servi e of a European Airline : : 1

M. Elf, M. Junger, V. Kaibel
II
Rotation Planning for the Continental Servi e
of a European Airline
M. Elf1 , M. Junger1 , and V. Kaibel2
1
Universitat zu Koln, Institut fur Informatik, Pohligstrae 1, 50169 Koln,
Germany
2
Te hnis he Universitat Berlin, Fa hberei h Mathematik,
Strae des 17. Juni 136, 10623 Berlin, Germany

Abstra t. We onsider a version of the air raft rotation problem where the ob-
je tive is to minimize delay risks. Given a set of ights to be own by a sub eet
the rotation problem is to nd a spe i route for ea h air raft of the sub eet
su h that ea h ight is own by exa tly one air raft. Additionally, the sequen e
of ights dening a route must satisfy ertain requirements mainly to avoid de-
lays. We present a mathemati al model for the problem of minimizing the delay
risk a ording to spe ial requirements of a major airline. An eÆ ient Lagrangian
heuristi is proposed that uses subgradient optimization and linear assignments as
subproblems. Computational results on real data are given and ompared to a tual
air raft rotations of that airline.

1 Introdu tion
The air raft rotation problem we onsider in this arti le is one of the rst steps
in the planning pro ess of an airline. Usually, two other problems have to be
solved before. First, the airline must de ide whi h ights should be oered.
This depends, for instan e, on the expe ted numbers of passengers and prots
of the ights. Be ause an airline has dierent types of air raft (sub eets ) ea h
with dierent hara teristi s like seating apa ities, rew size, and operational
osts it must also de ide whi h air raft type should be used to establish a
onne tion. The result of this eet assignment is a ight s hedule for ea h
sub eet whi h is the input for the rotation planning problem.
A ight s hedule for a given sub eet onsists of dierent legs (i.e., non-
stop ights) ea h dened by a departure and arrival airport, a date, and
departure and arrival times. An example for a leg between Frankfurt and
Amsterdam ould be
(FRA / 15. Aug / 19:20 ! AMS / 15. Aug / 20:25) .
The air raft rotation problem is to determine routes, i.e., sequen es of on-
se utive legs own by the same air raft.
In ontrast to other problems arising within the planning pro ess of
an airline (like the eet-assignment problem mentioned above or the rew-
s heduling problem ) the air raft rotation problem has seldomly been a subje t
2 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

in Combinatorial Optimization. Some models, solution methods, and results

for the air raft rotation problem of major U.S. airlines an be found, e.g, in
the papers of Clarke et al. (1997) and Bohland et al. (1998). The main obje -
tive of their models is the maximization of the through value. Be ause airline
networks in northern Ameri a have a distin tive hub and spoke stru ture, pas-
sengers often have to hange airplanes at the hubs during their trip. Airlines
try to make their onne tions attra tive by hoosing rotations whi h allow
passengers to travel without hanging airplanes too often. The trough value
is the revenue the airline expe ts to gain by additional passengers attra ted
to a servi e be ause of the possibility to stay on the same airplane rather
than to hange it during a stop-over. Besides the through value maximiza-
tion these models in lude maintenan e onstraints whi h guarantee regular
visits of suÆ ient lengths at maintenan e stations for every air raft.
The rotation problem we onsider is of dierent stru ture be ause the
obje tive is not to optimize through values and maintenan e onditions are
negligible. This is due to a dierent handling of maintenan e issues and due to
a dierent weighing of the goals \maximizing through value" and \minimizing
delay risk" by the our industrial partner Lufthansa Systems GmbH.
The rest of this arti le is organized as follows. In the next parts of this
se tion we dene our problem in detail and des ribe spe ial requirements and
properties. Se tion 2 des ribes a mathemati al model based on a graph formu-
lation. This is used to formulate an algorithm for the solution of the rotation
problem in Se tion 3. Computational results are presented in Se tion 4.

1.1 The Rotation Problem

The input for our rotation problem is a feasible s hedule. This s hedule is the
result of a eet assignment and onsists of all legs to be own by a sub eet
within a period of about six months. Feasibility means that there exist routes
overing all legs with at most as many routes as there are airplanes available.
Ea h leg is own by exa tly one airplane. This rotation planning problem
an also be interpreted as the problem of assigning ea h in oming leg at an
airport to one outgoing leg. By dening the su essor of ea h leg routes are
determined.
In ontrast to U.S. airlines ontinental servi es of European airlines show a
dierent stru ture. There is no hub and spoke network but a small number of
airports in the home ountry and many destinations in other parts of Europe.
Figure 1 shows an example of all onne tions within one day of a large sub eet
of a German airline. We an see that the arrival airports, resp. the departure
airports, of most onne tions are lo ated in the home ountry. That means,
most of the onne tions ae t a relatively small number of airports. Later we
des ribe how this an be used to redu e the problem size.
Be ause usually there are only few stop-overs, the through value is of
minor interest. The obje tive of our optimization is the redu tion of delay
risks. In order to avoid delays we are given several rules for onne ting legs.
 Air raft Rotation Planning 3

Fig. 1. Conne tions of a large sub eet during one day. The size of the airports
are drawn in logarithmi s ale a ording to the number of arrivals and departures.
Ea h edge represents at least one onne tion per day.

These rules had been developed by our industrial partner and represent its
riteria for building rotations. Some of the rules forbid onne tions, others
penalize them be ause of an in reasing delay risk. There are two kinds of
penalizing rules whi h we des ribe below. Ea h violation of a rule results in
a penalty. We are interested in rotations with a minimum sum of penalties
whi h means small delay risks.
One set of rules (lo al rules ) are easy to handle. They ae t the onne tion
of exa tly two legs. Later we will see how to model them with linear assign-
ment problems. An example of a lo al rule is that between two onne ted
legs there must be a ertain positive minimum ground time between the ar-
rival time of the rst and the departure time of the se ond leg. This time is
needed, e.g., for lling-up fuel, leaning-up, and inspe ting the air raft. It de-
pends on the airport of the onne tion, the departure airport of the rst, and
the arrival airport of the se ond leg. SuÆ iently large ground times should
furthermore guarantee that airplanes an start at their s heduled departure
times even if they arrive late. Under ertain onditions the a tual ground
time is allowed to be slightly less than the minimum ground time, although
4 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

this is not appre iated due to an in reasing delay risk. The number of su h
minimum ground time (MGT) violations should be kept small.
Some airports in Europe have a very large volume of traÆ . They are
alled air traÆ riti al (ATC) airports. Routes not visiting su h airports
too often should be preferred be ause large traÆ may ause delay. This is
taken into a ount by another lo al rule saying that the departure airport
and the arrival airport of two onne ted legs must not be air traÆ riti al.
A violation is alled dire t ATC violation. Overall there are six lo al rules.
The se ond lass of rules ae t the onse utive onne tion of more than
two legs, i.e, subpaths of routes. They are alled non-lo al rules and are mu h
more diÆ ult to handle. One rule restri ts the number of ATC airports an
airplane visits within one day. Another rule demands not to onne t a er-
tain number of onse utive legs with only the minimum ground time. The
most general rule is the following. For ea h subpath of a route beginning in
the morning a propagated minimum ground time (PMGT) is dened whi h
depends on the stru ture of the subpath and the possibility of delay a umu-
lation. The ground time of the last onne tion in su h a subpath should not
ex eed the propagated minimum groundtime.

1.2 Spe ial Properties

In our problem we do not need to worry about maintenan e requirements

be ause maintenan e events are impli itly modeled in the s hedule. The given
s hedule ontains maintenan e reserves (operational legs) whi h are virtual
ights with the same arrival and departure airport like
(FRA / 04. Aug / 00:00 ! FRA / 04. Aug / 23:59) .
This represents an 24 hours maintenan e he k at Frankfurt. Operational legs
are treated like usual legs in the rotation planning pro ess. The strategy of
the airline we have ooperated with is to ex hange an air raft that requires
a ertain maintenan e servi e with an air raft s heduled for a maintenan e
reserve when ne essary.
The European air traÆ has a spe ial stru ture. There are very few
overnight ights. Figure 2 shows the average number of airborne ma hines for
several sub eets of a German airline over the period of one day. We an see
that there is only one sub eet with an average of one airborne airplane during
the night. For all other sub eets there is a period of about three hours with
no ights. It follows that delays annot a umulate overnight. This means we
an de ompose the whole problem into optimization for ea h day.

2 Modeling the Problem

In this se tion we formulate the rotation planning problem as a graph problem
and derive an integer linear program (ILP) for whi h we will develop an
algorithm in Se tion 3.
 Air raft Rotation Planning 5

30
airborne machines 25
20
15
10
5
0
0h 3h 6h 9h 12h 15h 18h 21h 24h

Fig. 2. Average number of airborne ma hines over the period of one day. Ea h
graph orresponds to a sub eet. Time is given in hours.

2.1 A Graph Problem

Let n 2 IN be the number of airports and L be the set of legs for whi h arrival
or departure time lie within the optimization period (usually one day). For
ea h airport i 2 f1; : : : ; ng we dene a set of arrival nodes Ai and departure
nodes Di . For ea h leg arriving at an airport i within the period there is
exa tly on arrival node a 2 Ai and for ea h leg leaving an airport i within
the period there is exa tly one departure node d 2 Di . Thus, usual legs (i.e.,
those ompletely lying within the period) yield two nodes in the model, while
(the rare) \overnight-legs" give rise to only one node. Now we dene edges
representing feasible onne tions of two legs. Conne table legs orrespond to
a pair of arrival and departure nodes at the same airport. We dene an edge
set Ei at ea h airport i. If it is possible to onne t the legs orresponding
to the arrival node a 2 Ai and the departure node d 2 Di we introdu e
an edge ead 2 Ei . This yields a bipartite graph S Gi = (Ai [ Di ; Ei ) Sfor ea h
airport
S n
i 2 f1; : : : ; n g. Let
S n
G = (A [ D; E ) = n n
i=1 Gi with A = i=1 Ai ,
D = i=1 Di , and E = i=1 Ei be the olle tion of these graphs.
Figure 3 shows an example with three airports. Nodes are drawn top
down a ording to the arrival resp. departure times of their legs. Solid edges
represent possible onne tions. Arrival and departure nodes belonging to the
same leg are onne ted with a dotted ar . They are not edges of G but
represent the ight dened by their end nodes. Some of the arrival nodes
without a orresponding departure node are drawn red. These nodes are
alled initial nodes. They represent the air raft being lo ated at the respe tive
airport at the start of the optimization period (e.g., those that have spent the
night at that airport). The initial nodes mark the beginning of the dierent
routes in the rotation s hedule.
In order to nd a rotation we have to assign an arriving leg to ea h
departure leg. In the graph model this results in D-perfe t mat hings, i.e.,
subsets of the edges E su h that no two edges in the subset share a ommon
endnode, but every node in D is overed. Conversely, ea h D-perfe t mat hing
6 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

A1 D1 A2 D2 A3 D3

Fig. 3. The graph model with three airports. Solid edges represent possible on-
ne tions. Dotted edges orrespond to ights. Initial nodes are drawn red.

denes a rotation by assigning an arrival leg to ea h departure leg. Figure 4

shows a D-perfe t mat hing for the graph model of Figure 3. Bold edges
are part of the D-perfe t mat hing. The marked path starting from the rst
arrival node at airport A1 represents one of ve routes in the solution.
As mentioned above, lo al rules only ae t two onne ted legs. If we
weight the edges (a; d) 2 E of our graph G by (a;d) 2 IR0 a ording
to the penalty aused by the violation of lo al rules and negle t non-lo al
rules, the rotation problem an be solved by omputing a minimum weighted
D-perfe t mat hing of G. This problem an be solved eÆ iently (see, e.g.,
Ahuja et al. (1993)). Furthermore, the problem de omposes into Di -perfe t
mat hing problems for ea h airport. In order to speed up the omputation
they should be pro essed separately.

2.2 An ILP-Formulation

Non-lo al rules ae t more than one onse utive onne tion. They impli itly
dene ertain possible paths in the route of an air raft that should be avoided.
These rules annot be expressed in the mat hing formulation. Based on the
graph model, we formulate the problem with non-lo al rules as an integer
linear program.
Let P be the set of paths dened by the non-lo al rules. Every P 2 P
onsists of some edges P = e1 e2 : : : ek in E . Let jP j := k be the length of the
path P . For every path P 2 P we dene a weight P 2 IR0 a ording to its
penalty. For ea h edge (a; d) 2 E we dene a binary variable x(ad) 2 f0; 1g
 Air raft Rotation Planning 7

A1 D1 A2 D2 A3 D3

Fig. 4. One possible solution of the rotation problem. Bold edges represent hosen
onne tions. Red edges show a resulting route.

with the meaning that x(a;b) = 1 holds if the edge (a; b) 2 E belongs to
the solution and x(a;b) = 0 otherwise. For ea h path P 2 P we introdu e a
binary variable yP 2 f0; 1g with yP = 1 if and only if ea h edge e in the path
P = e1 e2 : : : ek is part of the solution. The optimum solution of the integer
linear program
X X
Z = min (a;d)x(a;d) + P yP
(a;d) 2E P 2P
X
x(a;d)  1 (a 2 Ai ; 1  i  n) (1)
d2Di
X
x(a;d) = 1 (d 2 Di ; 1  i  n) (2)
a2Ai
X
x(a;d) yP  jP j 1 (P 2 P) (3)
2P
(a;d)

x(a;d) 2 f0; 1g ((a; d) 2 E )

yP 2 f0; 1g (P 2 P )
is the optimum solution of the rotation problem. The onstraints (1) and
(2) together with the binary ondition for the x-variables guarantee that the
x-part of the solution always denes a D-perfe t mat hing in G be ause (1)
implies that ea h arrival node is overed by at most one edge and (2) implies
that ea h departure node is overed exa tly on e. The x-part in the obje tive
fun tion sums up the penalties for lo al rules (mat hing edges). By setting
8 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

yP = 1 for all P 2 P the onstraints (3) are always feasible and do not
in uen e the x-part of a solution. Thus, for every rotation there is a feasible
solution of the ILP and vi e versa. Be ause the sense of the optimization
is to minimize and the obje tive fun tion oeÆ ients P are non-negative a
variable yP has value zero unless
X
x(a;d) = jP j ;
2P
(a;d)

i.e., unless the x-part of the solution denes a route ontaining the path P .
It follows that the obje tive fun tion value is the sum of all penalties.

3 Solving the Problem

Using the ILP formulation of the previous se tion we developed a Lagrangean
heuristi whi h is able to nd good solutions in reasonable time. Running time
plays an important role sin e most of the s hedule and rotation planning is
still an intera tive pro ess. S hedules are manually ne-tuned by forbidding
existing onne tions, reating new onne tions, and by hanging legs. After-
wards new rotations are determined by the omputer and again modied by
a s hedule designer. This pro ess is repeated several times.
Another possibility for solving the ILP formulation is a bran h & ut
approa h using the LP-bound of the ILP-formulation. The LP-bound an be
omputed with a utting plane pro edure. Starting with the linear program
ontaining only the onstraint sets (1) and (2), onstraints of set (3) are
added if they are violated. After that the linear program is reoptimized and
the pro ess is iterated until no onstraint is violated. We tried this approa h
but it turned out not to be ompetitive with the approa h we des ribe in the
following se tion. This has basi ally two reasons. First, in general this method
does not yield feasible solutions for the rotation problem and it is not easy
to onstru t rotations from the fra tional LP-solutions. The se ond reason
is that in ea h iteration new violated onstraints must be dete ted. This
separation problem is a shortest path problem with diÆ ult side onstraints.
Its solution is very time onsuming.

3.1 Lagrangean Relaxation

Besides the onstraints (1) and (2) for the x-part of the solution our ILP-
formulation ontains a onstraint and an additional variable yP for ea h sub-
path P asso iated with a non-lo al rule. The ight s hedules we are dealing
with ontain thousands of su h subpaths whi h result in integer linear pro-
grams with a very large number of onstraints and variables. They are too
large for state of the art mixed integer solvers. In order to solve the rotation
problem, we apply a Lagrangean relaxation to our ILP-formulation and use
subgradient optimization to solve the dual problem. In general, this approa h
 Air raft Rotation Planning 9

does not yield optimal solutions. But ompared to a tually own rotations
we an substantially de rease the number of violations. The lower bound
provided by the Lagrangean relaxation is of minor quality.
By relaxing the onstraint set (3) for non-lo al rules with Lagrangean
multipliers P 2 IR0 for ea h subpath P 2 P we obtain a Lagrangean
relaxation
X X
ZD () = min (a;d)x(a;d) + P yP
2E
(a;d) P 2P
0 1
X X
+ P  x(a;d) yP jP j + 1A
P 2P 2P
(a;d)
X
x(a;d)  1 (a 2 Ai ; 1  i  n)
d2Di
X
x(a;d) = 1 (d 2 Di ; 1  i  n)
a2Ai
x(a;d) 2 f0; 1g ((a; d) 2 E )
yP 2 f0; 1g (P 2 P ) :
The Lagrangean dual is
ZD = max0 ZD ()
2IR
whi h yields a lower bound on the optimum obje tive fun tion value of the
ILP-formulation. Our Lagrangean relaxation has the \integrality property"
whi h means that there exists alway an integer optimum solution even if the
integrality requirements are ignored. Obviously the y -part of any optimum
solution is integer and does not in uen e the x-part. By a lassi al theorem
due to Birkho (1946) (see also von Neumann, 1953) the x-part of an opti-
mum solution is also integer sin e the feasible set is an integer polyhedron.
The integrality property implies that the bound obtained by the Lagrangean
dual equals the LP-bound of the ILP-formulation (see, e.g., S hrijver (1993)).
The independen e of the x-part and the y -part also guarantees that the La-
grangean relaxation with a xed  an be solved by determining D-perfe t
mat hings in the model graph like in the ase without non-lo al rules. The
optimum values of yP an be obtained by setting
(
0 if P  P
yP =
1 if P < P
for all P 2P :

3.2 Subgradient Optimization

Be ause the Lagrangean dual is a pie ewise linear onvex optimization prob-
lem it an be solved by a subgradient method as des ribed in Fis her (1985).
10 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

Given an initial value (0) , a sequen e f(k) g of Lagrangean multipliers is

iteratively generated by the rule
n o
(Pk+1) = max (Pk) + tk P(k) ; 0 (P 2 P ; k  1) (4)

where  (k) is a subgradient of the dual fun tion ZD () and tk is a positive
s alar step size. The subgradient of the k -th iteration is obtained as
X
P(k) = k)
x((a;d)
yP(k) jP j + 1 (P 2 P ; k  1)
2P
(a;d)

with the optimum solution (x(k) ; y (k) ) of the Lagrangean relaxation ZD ((k) ).
Theoreti ally, the sequen e fZD ((k) )g onverges to ZD if the step length
P
tk is hosen su h that tk ! 0 and ki=0 ti ! 1. In pra ti e it is more suitable
to hoose the step length a ording to
Z^ ZD ((k) )
tk = 
k k
(k) 2

with an upper bound Z^  ZD and a periodi ally de reasing 0 <  < 2.

In our appli ation the initial values are P = 0 for the Lagrangean multi-
pliers and  = 1:9 . If the lower bound annot be improved within 5 iterations
of the subgradient method , is divided by 2. In ea h iteration of the subgra-
dient optimization, the Lagrangean subproblem is solved and yields a feasible
solution of the rotation problem, sin e the x-part of the solution denes D-
perfe t mat hings in the model graph G. The best solution is stored and the
upper bound Z^ is set to the orresponding obje tive fun tion value. If Z^ is
updated,  is set to 1:9 again. Be ause of the large number of Lagrangean
multipliers we generate them only if they be ome positive, i.e in uen e the
relaxation. This happens only if the orresponding subpath is ontained in
a previously omputed D-perfe t mat hing. Multipliers are removed as soon
as their value be omes 0. By this strategy, the relaxation an be kept small.
In our experiments with real data the number of a tive multipliers never ex-
eeded 200. We run the subgradient pro edure for at most 250 iterations but
stop if the length of the sear h dire tion be omes too small.
Usually subgradient optimization does not produ e sequen es of monot-
onously de reasing lower bounds. Often a phenomenon alled \zig-zagging"
o urs whi h has very bad in uen e on the onvergen e and the quality of the
solution. This an be avoided by using an improved version of the subgradient
method proposed by Crowder (1976). In this variant the sear h strategy (4)
is repla ed by
n o
P(k+1) = max (Pk) + tk d(Pk) ; 0 (P 2 P ; k  1)
and the sear h dire tion
d(k) =  (k) + d(k 1)
(k  1)
 Air raft Rotation Planning 11

is hosen as a linear ombination of the urrent subgradient and the previous

dire tion. In our appli ation a damping fa tor of  = 0:7 turned out to be
suitable.

3.3 Solving the Subproblems

During the subgradient pro edure most of the work is spent in solving the
Lagrangean subproblems, i.e, for the solution of the bipartite mat hing prob-
lems in the model graph G. In our software the time for solving the mat hing
problems is about 98% of the overall running time. Thus, these problems
should be solved as eÆ iently as possible. One possibility to gain a faster
algorithm is to redu e the problem size. In Se tion 1.1 we already mentioned
the spe ial stru ture of our ight s hedules. There are many airports with
a very small number (e.g,  4) of onne tions during the day. This often
results in bipartite mat hings with exa tly one solution or in problems where
most of the edges annot be part of any solution. Due to stru tural reasons,
edges that are not part of any solution even o ur at airports with larger
number of onne tions. We an prune all these edges from the model graph
in a prepro essing step. This is done as follows.
Consider a bipartite graph Gi = (Ai [ Di ; Ei ) of our model and let M
be a Di -perfe t mat hing. An M -alternating path is a path su h that ea h
non-mat hing edge is followed by a mat hing edge and vi e versa. Alternating
y les are dened similarly. Sin e the symmetri dieren e of two mat hings
is a disjoint union of alternating paths and y les, it follows that an edge
belongs to no Di -perfe t mat hing if it is not ontained in any M -alternating
y le and not ontained in an alternating path with one end overed by M
and one not. If we dire t all edges in M from Di to Ai and all other edges from
Ai to Di , the rst kind of edges are edges between two strongly onne ted
omponents of the dire ted graph. The se ond kind of edges are edges whi h
are not part of a dire ted path starting at a free node in Ai . Both an be
omputed in linear time.
Another ru ial point for keeping the running time as small as possible is
the method for solving the bipartite mat hing problems. Usually this is done
by the Hungarian method (see Kuhn (1955)), but for our problem primal
methods are more suitable. During the subgradient optimization we have to
solve a sequen e of mat hing problems at the same graph but with dierent
obje tive fun tions. Espe ially in later iterations of the subgradient method
when the step size has be ome small there are only little hanges of edge
weights. It follows that the optimum obje tive fun tion values of the mat hing
problems hange only slightly and that the solution of an iteration is near to
the optimum of the next iteration.
This is taken into a ount by primal methods. They are able to perform
a \warm start" at a feasible solution, e.g the near optimum solution of the
previous iteration of the subgradient method. Often it is possible to om-
pute the optimum mat hing with only few iterations. In our appli ation we
12 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

formulated the bipartite mat hing problems as un apa itated transportation

problems and solved them with a spe ialized variant of the network simplex
method (see Ahuja et al. (1993)).

4 Results

We tested our algorithm on three dierent data sets of real ight s hedules.
For ea h of these s hedules we performed experiments with six sub eets of
dierent sizes and hara teristi s. It turned out that the s hedules do not
dier in terms of the omplexity of the rotation problems. Table 1 shows the
problem hara teristi s of all sub eets for a typi al day. There are four large
sub eets (321, 320, 733, and 735) and three smaller ones (314, 319, and AB6).
For ea h sub eet the table ontains a row with the number of edges in the
model graph G, the number of hosen edges ( onne tions) in the solution,
the number of dualized onstraints for non-lo al rules, the maximum number
of non-zero Lagrangean multipliers during the subgradient method, and the
time for the Lagrangean heuristi .

Table 1. Typi al problem hara teristi s for all sub eets

sub eets
314 319 320 321 733 735 AB6
edges in G 150 518 3064 1729 2334 1507 373
onne tions 33 108 207 236 207 129 48
dualized onstraints 85 142 1035 1132 1265 800 27
non-zero multipliers 34 57 104 175 130 113 19
time in se onds 0:2 0:7 4:9 3:0 4:1 2:4 0:1

Be ause our data shows a distin tive weekly periodi ity we do not present
results of the whole period of about six month but on entrate on a small
number of weeks. The presented results are generalizable. Figure 5 shows the
ratios of the number of violated rules in solutions found with the Lagrangean
heuristi and the number of violations in a tually own routes. Ea h graph
orresponds to one of the sub eets under onsideration. Ex ept for the sub-
eets 314, 319, and AB6 the ratio is between 0:4 and 0:7 whi h means that
the omputed routes ontain 30%{60% less violations than the own routes.
The number of violations for the sub eets 314 and AB6 is at least 20% better
than in the own routes. The ratio for sub eet AB6 is often less than 0:4.
For the sub eet 319 it is sometimes possible to obtain redu tions of violations
better than 50% but on some days we only get the same number of violations.
The time used to ompute the solutions is always less than 5 se onds. Table 1
 Air raft Rotation Planning 13

0.8

0.6
ratio

0.4

0.2

0
week 1 week 2 week 3

320 321 733 735 319 314 AB6

Fig. 5. Ratios of the total number of violated rules for omputed and a tually own
rotations. Ea h of the six graphs orresponds to a sub eet.

ontains typi al running times for all sub eets at a SUN Ultra 4 workstation
with 300 MHz.
Until now we only onsidered the total amount of violations. Table 2
shows a detailed omparison of all violations in omputed and own routes
for one week of sub eet 733. Also these results are similar for dierent weeks
and sub eets. We an see that in both ases the number of violations is
dominated by the number of violations for the rule \I" whi h is the PMGT
rule. With the Lagrangean heuristi it is possible to redu e these violations
drasti ally. Although we minimize the total amount of violations, the overall
de rease of violations is obtained by redu ing violations for all but one rule.
Only the number of violations of rule \E" (MGT violation) in the omputed
routes marginally ex eeds the violations in the own routes three times.
The last olumn of Table 2 ontains the lower bound obtained by opti-
mizing the Lagrangean dual. There is a large gap between the best solution
and this bound. This is not aused by an insuÆ ient onvergen e of the sub-
gradient method but the poor LP-bound of our ILP-formulation. Often a
Lagrangean heuristi is embedded in an bran h and bound s heme to nd
optimum solutions. Be ause su h a s heme stronly depends on the quality of
the bounding pro edure this is not reasonable in our ase.
In order to make our algorithms and tools for the rotation problem suit-
able for pra ti al use we bundled them in the software pa kage RPF. This
pa kage ontains a C++ lass library, a ommand line tool, and a graphi al
user interfa e. The library an be used to integrate our methods in existing
software pa kages. With the ommand line tool it is possible to read/write
the s hedule and routing data in the standard SSIM format used by many
airlines. With this format we an easily ommuni ate with existing software
without hanging it. In addition to the omputation of rotations, our tool
provides a lot of fun tionality to analyze s hedule data and routing informa-
14 M. Elf, M. Junger, and V. Kaibel

Table 2. Detailed omparison of omputed and a tual routes for the sub eet 733.
The left value in a olumn is the number of violations for the omputed route the
right value is the number of violations in the a tually own routes.

Day A B
lo al rules
C D E F
non-lo al rules
G H I
P bound
1. 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/1 6/4 0/2 0/1 0/9 36/55 42/72 12
2. 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 5/6 0/2 0/2 2/9 34/51 41/70 12
3. 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/1 4/5 0/2 0/1 2/9 37/58 43/76 13
4. 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/2 5/4 0/1 0/1 2/8 32/54 40/70 11
5. 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/2 6/4 0/1 0/1 2/7 32/53 40/68 12
6. 11/11 2/3 0/0 0/3 4/7 1/1 1/1 0/2 11/25 30/53 23
7. 7/7 1/2 0/0 1/2 3/6 0/0 0/0 0/2 7/17 19/36 13

tion. With the graphi al user interfa e the s hedule and routing information
an be displayed in a user-friendly way. Figure 6 shows a s reenshot of our
interfa e displaying a solution for sub eet 314. It is also possible to show
dieren es of two rotations, e.g., rotations found by optimizing with dierent
weighting of violations. This an help to analyse dierent rotations and to
nd an appropriate weighting strategy.

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 Air raft Rotation Planning 15

Fig. 6. Graphi al user interfa e showing a solution for subleet 314