Determining Optimum Number of Flight Deck Crew from HR Perspective

Abstract

Airline companies are usually facing high flight deck crew (FDC) costs. They usually go through three different stages just to determine the FDC. First is the network and scheduling which translates customer demand into flying hours. Second, the manpower planning which convert flying hours in terms of FDC. The third is the crew scheduling, which is pairing, assignment, and recovery from irregular operations. This study aims to focus on helping the manpower planning department in an airlines company to find out the availability of new methods for determining the optimum FDC with minimum possible cost. One important function of HR is the Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP). In other words, the succession planning. SWP focuses on two types of positions; the critical, and the pivotal. Since FDC positions (Captains and First Officers) are very critical, so they are the most important positions in any aviation -airline- company. Three new theories have been developed and proposed in the literature. The results and findings showed that two of the three theories give better results, an airline company can save up to 75 million $ per annum.