Pairings

Modified on: Mon, 4 Oct, 2021 at 10:24 AM

General:

Periods	Try to set period for full month not touching other months. If you select 28DEC-31JAN legality module might not be able to work out valid roster because of DEC part (ie not enough day offs in DEC)
Datasource	When testing the parameters, the Datasource should be in small batches with a small subset of crew. E.g. only captains.
Crew	Don't run rostering for single crew and expect a good results. The Scoring system is a comparative system thus you need more than 1 crew. Preferably more or less a number of crew required for coverage.
Flights	Experiment with different grouping values in roster pattern. Sometimes 4 flights in a row is good, sometimes 3 etc. When you have different flights with very different flights length you will get better results when doing rostering separately for longhauls and short flights.
Scoring	Scoring system doesn't guarantee full coverage with every value. 100% fairness might not give you full coverage. 60% grouping 40% fairness might. Even more: 60% grouping and 40% fairness might give you better fairness than 100% fairness. Experiment and remember grouping is extremely important. Fairness modules don't do grouping. And grouping is good.

General Tab:

Algorithms for engine V2

Basic algorithm	(Basic Constraint Optimization) For simple solutions this option will be faster than the CP-SAT.
CP-SAT algorithm	(The CP-SAT solver is technologically superior to the original CP solver and should be preferred in almost all situations)
	Special Rules: Minimum rest and Late to Early : The rules are hardcoded to work as the EASA min rest rule, and the EASA ”1 local night rest required” rule from ORO.FLT.105. They are used in cases where our simplified use of mimer does not pick up the violation. Minimum rest is violated if time between 2 pairings is greater than 5 but less than 12 hours. The late-early transitions checks that rest between 2 pairings contains 8 hours in the interval 22:00-8:00.

Fairness base (I) (II) (III)

Fairnes calculator e.g. BLH. Use the scores the set the priority.

This will allow you to control the distribution to a high level.

Prefered Rostering time

Processing time. The processing wil stop automatically when the time has been reached.

Normally a longer time will give a better result.

Day off fill in

Refernce activity to be used for Days Off.

Day off fill in is mandatory for legality purposes

Allow low rank

Allow low rank. The crew must be allowed to be low ranked. see Ranks

Allow remove

Allow preassigned activities to be removed.

Dynamic Grouping Optimizer

Use this option only for empty rosters or rosters with very few activities assigned prior to rostering run

Morning/Evening Flights

Specify the definition of a Morning/Evening flight. Don't make overlapping times.

Don't forget to fill times for morning/evening flights when using morning/evening fairness in scoring system

Roster patterns

Roster patterns are used only for grouping flights. This mean that the Roster Pattern used here is not the same as you use for crew (see Roster Patterns). If you want to use the roster patterns for crew, you first have to run "Auto Rostering - Roster Patterns", and untick "Allow remove" when you run Pairings.

When building roster patterns for the optimizer you have to use the built in parameter "fly"

Type

Legality type.

This will control the legality level.

Severity

Lagality severity.

If you have selected rules in "legality Rules" with a higher severity level, they will be ignored.

Filters Tab:

Filters are used to filter on top of the filters in General to all

Human Resources	From Filters
Roster Blocks	From Block Filters
Force Ignore positions	This option is used if you have a composition CP FO SFA and you only want to assign CP. then you input "FO,SFA"

Legality Calculators Tab:

This Tab is obsolete and will be removed in future versions.

Legality Rules Tab:

Move the rules that shouldn't be used to the "Ignored rules" section.

Try to limit the number of rules to those only needed for the optimization.

Score Tab:

Scores ar used to control the fairness distribution, it is controlled separately for Flights and Reference Activities.

The total of all scores must always be 100.

Level 1/2/3 fairness	Level 1/2/3 fairness corresponds to fairness bases in General tab. Note: Don't use BLH fairness for ref acts.
Grouping primary acts	Grouping flights using roster pattern from General tab - give this a high value. All rosters will be better when using grouping.
Activity count fairness	Use this option if you want fairness based strictly on number of assigned activities.
Morning/evening flights fairness	Morning/Evening used the flights definitions from General tab
Vacation friendly acts	Tries not to put evening flight before day offs or vacations and not to put morning flights after day offs or vacations - very soft rule. This will only work for rosters with plenty enough crew for this fairness to kick in.
Destination fairness	This option also checks for destinations inside pairing. Tries to equalize different destinations for crew. All destinations are valued the same. Days

Note: You can't save the parameters if the Score isn't 100.

Soft Rules Tab:

Soft rules are rules that the optimizer will try to follow. In many cases you will get better result if you have a Legality rule.

Day off assignment

Min - Max. number of days off you wish to assign.

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