PUNCTUALITY BUFFER TUNER

UNIQUE SPECIALIZED OPTIMIZATION MODEL

Schedule planners leave buffers between flights to cope with disruptions.

How many and how large; in practice, this is mostly a combination of weighing professional judgement against opportunities.

The Punctuality Buffer Tuner provides a more solid quantitative fundament for this.

The unique combinatory calculations, the eye for onward network stability, as well as for efficiency, provide new angles for improvement.

  • Optimal buffers between flights
  • Most effective place in fleet rotation
  • Using combined disruption statistics
  • Maximum benefit for punctuality
  • Minimal fleet efficiency loss

PUNCTUALITY BUFFER TUNER FEATURES

PBT assesses where the risks for delays in the schedule are largest and also what the onward delay risks are (code 93).

Then, based on a healthy ambitious punctuality target, it detects for all buffers whether they are consistent with it.


Thus it guides planners towards the most effective and efficient planning of buffers:

COMBINED BUFFERS

Every block time and turn time contains a buffer. This is relatively inefficient as most flights are on time and don't need a large buffer.

In those cases, the invested ground time is lost.

PBP uses statistical input about the historic performance of flights, to calculate the combined probability that sufficient aircraft will be available for each planned departure.

It will also show which schedule change can resolve this situation, thus providing direct feed-back for solutions.

OPERATIONAL RESERVE

A very specific form of punctuality buffer is an operational reserve.

This tool helps to define the need for such spare aircraft, to define its effects and to make the trade-off with the costs for an extra aircraft unit.

EFFICIENCY

The great benefit of PBT is that it pursues better punctuality and better efficiency in the same move.

Efficiency and reliability are often seen as contrary interests. The approach behind the Punctuality Buffer Tuner proves the opposite.

Besides showing where larger buffers are needed to comply with punctuality standards, PBT will also detect where they are over-sized.

Avoiding such waste of fleet capacity improves efficiency.

Thus, better on time performance can go hand in hand with better efficiency.

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