Cabin crew rostering at KLM: optimization of reserves

Abstract

In this paper, we will discuss the issue of rostering jobs of cabin crew attendants at KLM.Generated schedules get easily disrupted by events such as illness of an employee. Obviously, reservepeople have to be kept ‘on duty’ to resolve such disruptions. A lot of reserve crew requiresmore employees, but too few results in so-called secondary disruptions, which are particularlyinconvenient for both the crew members and the planners. In this research we will discuss severalmodifications of the reserve scheduling policy that have a potential to reduce the number of secondarydisruptions, and therefore to improve the performance of the scheduling process.