Re:How Southwest Airlines melted down
by amluto on Wednesday December 28, 2022 @05:42PM
(#34167014)
Of course I’m oversimplifying the process. But my point is the actual number of flights, passenger and luggage loads and unloads, etc can be a lot lower than a normal workload. On a normal day, an average Southwest plane flies quite a few hops, loads many passengers, unloads many passengers, etc. For a worst case reset, the normal routing doesn’t need to be followed.
Of course this will introduce complexity. But it will also need decently less than a normal day’s number of operations.
If I were designing a solver for where to move aircraft and crews (which is apparently what SkySolver does), I would test it on random and malicious inputs. If it’s initialized with every crew member and every plane at an independent random airport in the US (where Southwest has service) with a few broken for good measure and a few airports shut down, it should still find a solution. Waiting 12-24 hours to start so none of the crew is timed out could be part of a valid solution.
Re:How Southwest Airlines melted down
by bfung on Thursday December 29, 2022 @03:15AM
(#34170601)
It’s still probably not that simple; the problem seems like it can be analogous to some sort of knapsack and/or traveling salesman problem, which are NP-hard! Even testing would take a long time.
Re:How Southwest Airlines melted down
by amluto on Thursday December 29, 2022 @10:37AM
(#34173676)
That’s true if you want an optimal solution. If you just want a decent solution (for various definitions of decent), the complexity may not be too bad.
Of course this will introduce complexity. But it will also need decently less than a normal day’s number of operations.
If I were designing a solver for where to move aircraft and crews (which is apparently what SkySolver does), I would test it on random and malicious inputs. If it’s initialized with every crew member and every plane at an independent random airport in the US (where Southwest has service) with a few broken for good measure and a few airports shut down, it should still find a solution. Waiting 12-24 hours to start so none of the crew is timed out could be part of a valid solution.