Crew scheduling is an important factor in airline cost management as crew costs are typically the second largest expense after fuel. Better crew scheduling can reduce these controllable costs. When scheduling crews, airlines must create pairings of flight legs assigned to individual crews, starting and ending at the same crew base. Crews are then assigned to these pairings while considering qualifications, pre-assigned activities, and minimizing costs without reducing quality of life. Different crew scheduling methods like assigned lines, bid lines, and preferential bidding involve tradeoffs between efficiency and job satisfaction. Constraints like flight times, crew duties and rest periods, qualifications, and seniority must also be considered for an optimal schedule.

1. CREW SCHEDULING
“a perspective to manage crew cost”

2. FACTS
 Crew cost is one of major cost components in
airline industries
 It is usually the second largest after fuel cost
 It is more controllable than fuel cost
 Savings in crew costs can be achieved through
better scheduling

3. FACTORS DETERMINE CREW UNIT COST
Benefits, work, and
rules driven by
contract cycle or
labours agitation
Hub and Spoke structure
creates extremely many
possible pairings

4. CREW SUPPLY CHAIN
Deciding
where the
fleet goes
Counting
the amount
of crew to
operate the
fleet
Hiring
people with
right quality
and quantity
Making
sure the
crew
readiness
to operate
the fleet
Giving
appropriate
task
Controlling
crew
movement

5. CREW SCHEDULING
 Crew Pairing
“sequence of flight legs own by the same aircraft type,
starting and ending at the same station, called the crew base.”
The objective is to use the minimum number of resources (crew)
to schedule (cover) the complete timetable.
 Crew Assignment
“the created pairings are assigned, together with other kinds of
activities, to actual crew, in compliance with the qualifications
and previously assigned activities, referred to as pre-
assignments, of the crew”
The objective is to find feasible assignments that minimize
costs without overriding crew’s quality of life.

6. CREW SCHEDULING METHOD
 Assigned Lines
 Bid Lines
 Preferential Bidding System
Operation
Planner
Crew
Schedule
Crew
Operation
Planner
Crew
Pairing
Crew Crew
Schedule
Crew Operation
Planner
Crew
Schedule

7. ASSIGNED LINES METHOD
 Simplicity
 Equality between junior
and senior crew member
 Low job satisfaction
 Susceptible to intervention
 Too many intervention
may cause inefficiency
Advantage Disadvantage

8. BID LINES METHOD
 High job satisfaction if
preferred pairing is
awarded
 Simplicity
 Offer a transparent and
easy process to bid and
to award
 Preferred pairing may
conflict with crew
members predetermined
activities
 Too many reallocation
assignment
 These inefficiencies also
force airlines to hire more
crew members.
Advantage Disadvantage

9. PREFERENTIAL BIDDING METHOD
 High job satisfaction
 Flexible pairing
 Efficient
 Complicated
 Difficult to award all
pairing
 It may take many hours
and multiple runs to
achieve the optimal
solution
Advantage Disadvantage

10. CONSTRAINT
 Personnel Constraint
 Time constrain
 Flight time
 Flight duty time
 Rest time
 Personnel activities
 Medical check
 Recurrent license
 Personnel rights
 Leg/flight Constraint
 Qualification
 Rating
 Language proficiency
 Company’s Standard
 Standard service
 Standard complement
 Seniority
 each flight must consist of
several crew generation to
ensure regeneration

11. RECOMMENDATIONS
 In order to perform an efficient crew rotation, crew
supply chain needed to manage as an integrated supply
chain.
 Every crew scheduling method has advantages and
disadvantages, thus every airlines must deeply
understand their own crew requirement to choose the
right method.
 Optimizer tools are needed to set the most efficient
schedule.
 Irregular operation procedure should be made to protect
optimum plan and to keep fairness among crew.

12. NOTES
Hi Readers,
Firstly, I’d like to say thanks for reading this, hope this could help
you, and I’m sorry if there is a mistake (Nobody’s perfect anyway
). If you have a question or want to discuss about this don’t
hesitate to contact my mail at lwidayanto@yahoo.com,
widayanto1986@yahoo.co.id, or widayanto86@gmail.com
I’m compiling this from many resources like airline magazine,
wikipedia, books, people’s research, articles, etc. I’d read so
many resources and it’s making me forget the “real” resources
:p. So, I’d like to say thanks to everybody who helps me making
this but unfortunately I couldn’t mention it one by one because of
that matter.
Thanks once again