The principal aim of simulation is to provide a platform on which environments or technology, either real or proposed, may be recreated for the purposes of training, visualisation and research. Simulators’ fidelity range widely; some aim to recreate an environment or system to such a high degree that it is difficult to distinguish between the simulator and the real system, while others simply a...

In airline scheduling a variety of planning and operational decision problems have to be solved. We consider the problems aircraft routing and crew pairing: Aircraft and crew must be allocated to flights in a schedule in a minimal cost way. Although these problems are not independent, they are usually formulated as independent mathematical optimisation models and solved sequentially. This appro...

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) define flight deck operations by prescribing the sequence of actions for flight crew to complete each segment of the mission. Well-designed procedures allow the flight crew to perform the required sequence of actions in a feasible progression within the operationally allowable time window. Current practices for developing procedures rely on judgments of doma...

This descriptive study reports the results of assays performed to detect circulating autoantibodies in a panel of 7 proteins associated with the nervous system (NS) in sera of 12 healthy controls and a group of 34 flight crew members including both pilots and attendants who experienced adverse effects after exposure to air emissions sourced to the ventilation system in their aircrafts and subse...

This study analyzes techniques instructor pilots (IPs) use to facilitate crew analysis and evaluation of LOFT performance. We analyzed IP facilitation and crew participation for 36 debriefing sessions conducted at five U.S. airlines. For this analysis we developed a rating instrument called the Debriefing Assessment Battery (DAB) and demonstrated that it can be used reliably. IP facilitation sk...

Because of the unique occupational risk factors of commercial pilots, cabin crew, and flight attendants, numerous studies have investigated their risks for variousdiseases. Ingeneral,mortality from cancer, as well as cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular diseases, is significantly lower inpilotsandcabincrewcomparedwith the general population.1 However, despite their overall improved ...

When a passenger becomes sick while flying on board a commercial airline flight, the cabin crew commonly solicit the assistance of a volunteer physician. Although in-flight medical emergencies take place every day, little is known about the epidemiology of these events. A new study by Sand and colleagues sheds light on the incidence of specific illnesses that occurred on board commercial flights.

An airline crew rostering problem is a large-scaled and complex optimization problem that assigns crew members to the flight duties while satisfying agreements with the labor union, the government regulations, the carrier’s own policies, and other requirements. The traditional crew rostering problem considers only minimizing the total perdiem in order to reduce the airline expense. This paper p...