Multi-Agent Based Simulation of Collaborative Mechanism for Airline Flight Delay Recovery

Abstract:
Flight delay recovery is a critical issue in airline operations and management, which severely affects the economic performance and reputation of company. However, it is quite difficult to obtain an optimal integrated recovery solution in a short time relying on manual negotiation, since the process of flight delay recovery involves multiple related resources, requiring coordination of several departments. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent based collaborative decision-making mechanism, which assists airline departments to collaborate with each other in order to address a comprehensive and balanced recovery solution in relatively short time. The multi-agent method is used to create a virtual flight delay recovery center, in which the agents represent the decision-making departments of the airline，for the AOC, the Market department, the Flight department and the Ground Service department. These agents first address the problems in their own areas parallelly and then interact to generate a complete recovery solution by performing the collaborative mechanism, whose main goal is to strike a balance between the interests of all decision-makers while ensuring the smooth operation of flights. Experimental results show that the approach is able to achieve an integrated recovery solution in shorter time, while the recovery solution provides a balanced improvement in all aspects of delay time, revenue levels, crew satisfaction and passenger satisfaction.