Flight Schedule Recovery: A Simulation-Based Approach

In this paper, we report our work on the flight recovery problem for China Eastern Airlines. Traditionally, the flight recovery problem is often modeled as an integer or mixed integer linear programming problem. However, such a model cannot take many complex constraints and uncertainties in real applications. Furthermore, we have found solutions obtained based on such a model difficult to implement in their existing operations, as in the case of CEA. Therefore, we propose a simulation-based approach, which works well with their existing operations. Our work demonstrates the potentials of simulation based methods in the study of the flight recovery problem, and possibly other similar problems.