Why aircraft scheduling becomes difficult
A flight program may look straightforward until individual aircraft must be assigned. Each tail has its own availability, fleet characteristics, location, and maintenance position. Every assignment also affects what becomes possible later in the rotation.
A choice that looks good for one flight can create an impossible connection, leave an aircraft at the wrong station, or make maintenance harder to complete. That is why the whole network must be considered, not just one flight at a time.
A constraint-aware optimization approach
OptCo checks whether a schedule can work while it searches. It applies airline rules as schedules are built and improved, instead of checking them only at the end.
- Minimum turnaround times allow realistic ground connections.
- Station continuity keeps each aircraft in the right location.
- Fleet and aircraft compatibility limit assignments to valid combinations.
- Availability windows and service periods define when each aircraft can operate.
- Grouped activities can remain together when they form one operational unit.
The goal is not a black-box answer. It is a set of workable scenarios that planners can review, compare, and use to make decisions.
Explore options with evolutionary optimization
Complex scheduling problems have many possible combinations. OptCo creates candidate schedules, evaluates them, and improves them over many generations.
This tests far more options than a planner could by making one change at a time. The search is guided by operating constraints and the costs defined for the schedule.
Represent airline policy, not only technical compatibility
Two assignments can both be technically possible while one is clearly better for the operation. OptCo’s rules matrix lets planners describe matches as preferred, non-preferred, or forbidden. Those distinctions make airline-specific policies part of the optimization model.
This adds detail that a simple compatibility table cannot show. It also lets planners change how the search treats specific activity-resource combinations.
Connect flying with maintenance routing
Maintenance requirements affect where an aircraft can go. OptCo checks whether a station can perform the work and has enough capacity, so maintenance becomes part of the rotation.
Compare scenarios with transparent results
Optimization is most useful when planners can understand the result. OptCo reports costs by leg, by aircraft, and for the full scenario. This shows where schedules differ and which tradeoffs shaped the result.
Planning teams can compare several schedules and see how changes to constraints, rules, or priorities affect the result.