Expert bidder for a pilot monthly schedule
Conference
Morris, K, Navlakha, J. (1990). Expert bidder for a pilot monthly schedule
. SMART BIOMEDICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL SENSOR TECHNOLOGY XI, 1293 pt 2 724-735.
Morris, K, Navlakha, J. (1990). Expert bidder for a pilot monthly schedule
. SMART BIOMEDICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL SENSOR TECHNOLOGY XI, 1293 pt 2 724-735.
Several weeks before each month begins, an airline pilot is issued a bid package describing the coming month's schedule. The pilot must turn in a bid on the schedule. Schedulers then assign a 'line of time' based on the category seniority number of the pilot. (A category is define by the base, aircraft type and seat, i.e. captain, copilot, or flight engineer.) The most senior pilot in a category gets his/her first choice and need bid only one line. The second most senior pilot will get his first choices if it is different from the #1 pilot, or his second choice if their first choices are the same. And so it goes on down the seniority list. It is obvious that a pilot must bid at least as many lines of times as his category seniority to insure he is not assigned an undesired line. Many factors can enter into bidding the lines of time, and especially for pilots near the bottom of the category seniority, a lot of time is involved. Each pilot weighs the importance of each factor differently, and priorities of each pilot often change from month to month. This paper describes an expert system to help make the task easier and more exact. The system is programmed in OPS5 and runs on a VAX 8800 machine.
