Title: Revolutionizing Airline Planning & Scheduling with the Invention of Unified Optimization
Speaker: Dr. Nikolaos Papadakos
Affiliation: Decisal Ltd
Location: Room 345 Huxley Building
Time: 2:00pm

Abstract. Airline planning and scheduling are complex mixed integer problems. To reduce complexity each of them has traditionally been split into stages. For example, scheduling is split into fleet assignment, aircraft scheduling, and crew scheduling, which are solved sequentially one after the other. These stages are, however, interdependent and airlines have to deal with under-optimal results and constraint violations. Decisal is the company that invented algorithms for Unified Optimization of these stages, greatly improving profit optimization and constraint satisfaction. The methodology for Unified Optimization includes several advancements of Benders Decomposition. Finally, in some cases, both the Benders master problem and the Benders subproblem are made of improved column generation algorithms.

About the speaker. Dr Nikos (Nikolaos) Papadakos is the research and development director of Decisal. Prior to that he worked as a research associate at Imperial College London where he also received a PhD in operations research and an MSc in advanced computing. He also holds a BSc in mathematics from the University of Athens. Finally, his work experience includes the Bank of Attica and Biomex Epe, in software development, sales, and customer support.