In an operational airline environment, disturbances to the planned flight schedule cannot be avoided. In the case of crew absences, airlines can employ reserve crews to cover open positions in crew schedules. The airline reserve crew pairing problem is concerned with the determination of optimal airline reserve crew patterns, which are defined by the number, lengths, and start times of reserve crew pairings. Currently, there are no existing solutions that solve the airline reserve crew pairing problem for long-haul cockpit crew.

This project addresses the airline reserve crew pairing problem for long-haul cockpit crew. A reserve pattern evaluation model has been developed that uses airline simulations to determine the quality of existing reserve patterns. This evaluation model is used iteratively by four optimisation algorithms that aim to generate optimal reserve patterns. The solutions generated by the algorithms are compared to each other in a number of experiments. Following these experiments, recommendations are made on how the gap between expected reserve demand and scheduled reserve capacity can be minimised.