Scheduling of Daily Flight Training for a United States Navy Strike Fighter Squadron Detachment.

We discuss the problem of creating daily flight schedules for two-week training detachments of U.S. Navy Strike Fighter Squadron 106 (VFA-106) in Key West, Florida. The daily flight schedule requires pairings of students, instructors, three variants of F/A-18 aircraft, limited adversary aircraft, airspace deconfliction, sequential syllabus events, discrete flight time windows, and crew rest requirements. Traditionally, three scheduling officers manually create a flight schedule based on their professional experience. We formulate a binary integer program to automate the scheduling of flight events with the goal of maximizing daily events scheduled. Simple spreadsheet inputs to the model reduce administrative time to create a daily flight schedule. The output of the model is a printable flight schedule. Model implementation results in an average increase of 1.16 more events per day than a handwritten schedule, which can reduce required length of each detachment in Key West by a minimum of a half day.

Recommended citation: Foraker, J., Lazzaro, G., Nelson, P., & Barkley, P. (2021). Scheduling of Daily Flight Training for a United States Navy Strike Fighter Squadron Detachment. Military Operations Research, 26(2), 5–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27028853