2021 marks ten years since Finnair became the first airline in the world to use a bio-mathematical model to influence crew planning results in real-time, reducing fatigue risk as crew pairings and rosters are constructed. Tuula Ojaluoma, Head of Operations Resource Planning at Finnair, explains:
"Fatigue risk management is of course a much broader topic, but for reducing the roster-induced fatigue risk, we are using a bio-mathematical model connected directly into our crew planning solutions. The model automatically informs the optimizers, making poor scheduling combinations viewed as more 'expensive' and thus being avoided", she says. "We've been using this since 2011 in our planning processes and we also have 'fatigue alerts' in day of operation, informing crew controllers so that they can place a fatigue-awareness call to the crew. These alerts appear automatically when, for example, a flight is delayed and the prediction passes over our set threshold", she continues.
Arvid Müllern-Aspegren, FRM Expert at Jeppesen, adds: "The most effective point in the crew management process for using fatigue models, is during crew pairing and roster optimization. In those two steps, a huge amount of different scheduling combinations are considered. Guiding the results to lower risk during this construction step can mean producing a plan with about 10-30% lower overall fatigue risk." He continues: "That reduction should be compared with manually modifying rosters once they have been built, which typically results in far less than 1% risk reduction, plus a much more cumbersome planning process. Finnair pioneered the automated approach in 2011 and we are thrilled to support them into their second decade."
Real-time influence on industry-strength crew planning optimizers put extreme requirements on fatigue models. Please read more in this document about the secret behind making this interaction at all possible.
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