Optimizing Airline Pilots Training Plans: A Mixed Integer Linear Programming Approach

Due to the essential role that pilots play in the operation of airlines, the pilots should demonstrate a high level of skills and technical knowledge for safe conduct of aircrafts. For this purpose, pilots must pass specific training courses that are time consuming and expensive. Consequently, to keep the flights without interruption, to have the best use of resources, and to minimize the costs, the airlines need to find optimal training plans for their crew. In this paper, we formulate this process as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. Due to complexity of the model, we propose a greedy heuristic algorithm. To test the validity of the MILP model as well as the performance of the heuristic, we conducted computational experiments on randomly-generated instances with realistic features, and we report the results which provide useful insights and show the effectiveness of the algorithm.