Rerouting Aircraft for Airline Recovery

Disruptions in airline transportation systems can prevent airlines from executing their schedules as planned. Adverse weather conditions, congestion at airports, and mechanical failures often hinder a flight schedule. During such events, decision makers must reschedule flight legs, and reroute aircraft, pilots, and passengers. We present an optimization model that reschedules legs and reroutes aircraft by minimizing an objective function involving rerouting and cancellation costs. We develop a heuristic for selecting which aircraft are rerouted, and we provide proof of concept by evaluating our model using a simulation of airline operations. Finally, we revise the model to minimize crew and passenger disruptions.