Rescheduling of flights during ground delay programs with consideration of passenger and crew connections

• A new formulation for the rescheduling problem of flights due to a GDP is presented.
• Model incorporates missed connection cost for crews and passengers.
• Practical extensions are discussed and useful insights for management are provided.
• High quality solutions are generated quickly for real-world and random instances.

We address the rescheduling problem by an airline when a ground delay program (GDP) is issued with mathematical programming techniques. The objective is to minimize delay measures, cost for crew and passenger misconnections, and cost of flight cancelations subject to several restrictions. We present a new linear integer model that incorporates all objectives. Using real-world and random data we present extensive computations to evaluate the model that is solved with standard software. High quality solutions are found quickly, i.e. within seconds. We show the significant effect of setting cost values for misconnections and cancelations on the new slot assignments.