VDM Moges, B: Crew Scheduling System - The Case of Ethiopian Air

In this book, the Ethiopian Airlines (EAL) crew scheduling system is considered and investigated. A crew scheduling decision is one of the decisions among other operational decisions faced by the Company. The Company has been preparing and distributing the schedules on a weekly basis and it performs the entire crew scheduling function manually. In EAL, the crew scheduling preparation is subjected to different rules, regulations, safety considerations, contractual agreements and conditions of awards and agreements. To check whether these factors are consistently considered or not, five recent schedules prepared on May 28, June 4, 11, 18, and 25 were reviewed and assessment was made on these schedules by taking the month of June, 2007 assignment as a sample. In the course of analysis, 20 cabin crew members were randomly selected from these schedules and the data related with them was analyzed on the basis of monthly duty time, days-off incorporation, fairness of the assignment in terms of consistently assigning all available flights to the crew members equitably, and quality (error rates) of the schedule.