Air Canada is one of North America’s largest airlines, serving millions of passengers annually with a reputation for safety, reliability, and premium service. Behind the scenes, the airline’s operations depend on precise crew planning to ensure flights run smoothly, even when disruptions arise.
Impact
7-figure
Revenue boost ($ CAD)
–20 %
Reduced overhead costs
Situation
In the aviation world, flight disruptions are inevitable from weather delays to last-minute crew sickness. To maintain operational continuity and passenger satisfaction, airlines rely on a pool of reserve pilots to step in when the unexpected happens.
For Air Canada, finding the right balance was a constant challenge: too few pilots on reserve risked delays and cancellations; too many drove up unnecessary costs.
Complication
Historically, crew reserve planning was a manual, experience-driven process. Planners used spreadsheets and historical data to estimate reserve sizes months in advance, while reactive scheduling handled short-term coverage gaps.
But rising operational complexity and increasing flight volumes were making this approach unsustainable. The result: inconsistent coverage, excessive reserve staffing in some months, shortages in others and avoidable flight disruptions.
Solution
We partnered with Air Canada to design a data-driven crew reserve planning system, powered by a combination of machine learning and advanced optimization.
The approach was twofold:
- Crew Reserve Sizing Using long-term historical patterns, commercial forecasts, and disruption probabilities, we built an AI model to predict the optimal number of reserve pilots for a 12-month horizon.
- Crew Reserve Planning An optimization engine was then used to allocate reserves against the following month’s confirmed flight schedule, maximizing coverage while minimizing idle reserves.
This new system helped ensure Air Canada maintained the right reserve levels at all times: enough to handle disruptions but lean enough to avoid unnecessary costs.
Outcome
Within six months, Air Canada achieved a 99.5% crew coverage rate during disruptions, while reducing surplus reserve staffing by 30%.The result was fewer flight delays, improved operational efficiency, and significant cost savings on unnecessary reserve pilot allocations.
