Multi-objective optimization of flight schedules to maximize constraint tolerance by local search and archive mechanisms

To introduce the concept of the “constraint tolerance” (i.e., a feasibility of solutions) in the flight scheduling problem, this paper proposes the optimization method that can find the feasible flight schedules by optimizing the original objective function while maximizing the constraint tolerance as much as possible. The proposed method further is improved by integrating it with the local search and archive mechanisms to obtain a wide range of Pareto-optimal solutions with a high constraint tolerance. A comparison between the proposed method and the conventional methods with or without adding a new objective function to maximize the constraint tolerance shows the statistical superiority of the proposed method.