Distributed Optimization For Customized Aircraft Fleet Scheduling

DAKOTA is a software environment for aircraft scheduling. Important features of the system include an extended set partitioning algorithm for optimizing schedules, a geographic-based display subsystem, schedule editing tools, context-sensitive hyperhelp, and report writing facilities. The goal is to provide a system that can help users quickly produce aircraft schedules that efficiently utilize the available fleet. The manual schedule editing procedures and the optimizer work seamlessly, making the best of both approaches available to the scheduler. Designed from the perspective of the end user, DAKOTA is a comprehensive flight scheduling system that is easy to use, and easy to master. Designing and implementing high-quality graphical human-computer interfaces is a challenging process. In this report, some of the user interface design choices are presented and analyzed. The fundamental problem addressed is the need to arrange customized air travel military personnel (clients) who submit travel requests composed of one or more origin-destination pairs called request legs.