Scheduling air traffic controllers

Abstract

The effective rostering of Air Traffic Controllers is a complex and under researched area of the personnel scheduling literature. An effective method to produce real world rosters for controllers requires the ability to model shifts, breaks, multiple tasks and their associated qualifications, to rotate staff through all the tasks for which they are qualified to maintain skill levels, the requirement to train staff whilst continuing normal operations and an ability to reroster in the event of unexpected events. Examples in the literature that examine some of these components include shift scheduling, break planning and multi skilled staff. We shall present an algorithm that can effectively model many of the features of the ATC rostering problem, and produce useful real world rosters for operational use.