Today as the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, we had no choice but to take the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 AGIFORS Revenue Management Meeting in Helsinki. This decision was taken with heavy heart, but was inevitable given the rapid deterioration of the situation around the COVID-19.

Safety of our attendees was our biggest concern when taking the decision. In addition, many airlines, vendors and academic institutions around the globe have introduced travel restrictions following the advices of their national authorities. 

No need to say that we are extremely sad to have had to cancel our meeting. We sincerely apologize to all participants who were looking forward to join us in Helsinki. Of course, we will refund all those who have registered already, as well as all the sponsors we received.

We want to express a very big thank you to the team at Finnair for their help and support during the last months. We are very glad to announce that they already accepted to remain our co-host for next year meeting and we therefore hope to see you all in Helsinki in 2021!

Finally, we want to thank you, the AGIFORS RM members, for the ongoing trust you place in our community, and for your sense of understanding and caring. Without you, this study group would not exist in the first place.

 

We wish you all the best, and assure you that we are fully committed to make the next Revenue Management Meeting an extraordinary one!

 

Take care of yourself!

 

Virginie Lurkin and Hunkar Toyoglu.

 

“Our power is in our choice of how to respond to the challenges and crisis in our lives”.

Today we have had to take the decision to cancel the 2020 Agifors Crew Management Meeting in Istanbul.

We are very sad to have had to take this this decision, but given the uncertainty that surrounds the COVID-19 Virus, we had no other option than to take this. There are currently numerous travel restrictions imposed by national authorities around the globe, restricting people traveling from one country to the other. And more of these restrictions are being imposed on a moment by moment basis.

The current situation is so much in motion at this moment, that there is no way for us to predict how it will continue to develop in the 40 days leading toward the projected start date of the event. We could not take the responsibility in case our delegates could not return timely and safely to their point of origin. But foremost we do not want to add the tiniest bit of risk to the health of anybody.

At this point we want to apologize to all who were, like us, looking forward to the event. Those who have registered already will get a full refund. This also applies to all the sponsors of the event. Their sponsorship fees will be refunded also. 

Also we do want to express a mountain of thanks to the absolutely marvelous team at Turkish Airlines. They have done a outstanding job, and we were heading towards a truly wonderful event. So sad, that it was not to be, at least not in 2020. However, very much hope to retain Turkish Airlines as the co-host for the 2021 Agifors Crew Management Meeting.

Our thanks also go to all those who took the effort to register already, and to those who intended to do so in the coming weeks. Without you, this event would not be here! We do hope that you will all bear with us, and continue to support the Agifors community next year. We will be back, better and bigger than ever!

All the Best, stay healthy, and stay safe.

Samuel Rosat

Marcel Sol

Details are still being worked out, but we are planning a full schedule of meetings next year. All Study Group Meetings will take place April/May and the Symposium in September/October. Exact dates will be announced as soon as possible.

 

Study Groups:

• Crew Management: Istanbul, Turkey – Hosted by Turkish Airlines - 20-22 April
• Revenue Management: Helsinki, Finland – Hosted by FinnAir - 5-7 May
• Airline Operations (including Maintenance Operations): Muscat, Oman - Hosted by Oman Air - 1-4 June
• Schedule and Strategic Planning: TBD

Annual Symposium:

• Toulouse, France – Hosted by Air France/KLM and Airbus

Keji Wei, from the Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, has been recognized by AGIFORS as Winner of the 2019 Anna Valicek Award and was presented with the Silver Anna Valicek Medal for the paper “Airline Timetable Development and Fleet Assignment Incorporating Passenger Choice”

 

Maximilian Pohl, from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, has been recognized by AGIFORS as Second Place Winner of the 2019 Anna Valicek Award and was presented with the Bronze Anna Valicek Medal for the paper “Runway Scheduling during Winter Operations”

Congratulations to both winners! Links to the papers and more information can be found on the Anna Valicek Award web page. 

AGIFORS and the airline OR community has lost one of its most endearing and thoughtful personalities in Keith Rapley. He was the AGIFORS President from 1993-1996. For Keith, OR was not so much a matter of methodology as a way of looking at the world, a stance that enriched the community of both those working directly on operational research projects and those in the wider airline community. His obituary will appear in the December edition of Inside OR. RIP.

Last month, Boeing and Alaska Airlines hosted the 59th Annual Symposium in Seattle. Long time AGIFORS member Ira Gershkoff of T2RL wrote a nice summary for their internal newsletter. He has graciously shared it with us and we've made it available to you. First View: AGIFORS Symposium

From a total of 16 submitted articles the 2019 Anna Valicek Award Committee has selected the two finalists for the 2019 Anna Valicek Award

• Keji Wei, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA: “Airline Timetable Development and Fleet Assignment Incorporating Passenger Choice”
• Maximilian Pohl, Technical University of Munich, Germany: “Runway Scheduling during Winter Operations”

As finalists, they will present their work at the upcoming AGIFORS Symposium, to be held in Seattle, WA, USA, between September 30th and October 4th, 2019. Then, the AGIFORS Council will select the winner of the 2018 Anna Valicek Award.  In addition, given the exceptional quality of the articles submitted this year, an Honorable Mention has been awarded as well as the Highlight for Societal Application. Read more on the Anna Valicek Award page.

As technical chairs, we want to promote the value of the presentations which are given at AGIFORS events.

We want to illustrate the benefit of attending AGIFORS events and the Symposium in particular.

Also, we want to stress the opportunity for any airline analytics professional to interact with the experts in their respective fields.

So, without disclosing all AGIFORS proceedings, which are available to AGIFORS members, and which include decades of presentations, we here share FOR FREE, a selection of presentations based on their respective number of downloads. 

We welcome your feedback in the comments section below.

• Rodrigo Acuna Agost, Thomas Fiig - The end of Airline Revenue Management as we know it? (Deep) Reinforcement Learning for Revenue Management

• Himadri Mukherjee, Lakshmi Manasa Kasivajjula, Vineeth Patapati - Airline Market Segmentation

• Goran Isakovski, Fraser McGibbon - OTP Evolution and Technology Leaps for Delay Cost Improvement

In the near future, we will be sharing the next batch of files in this series. 

Rodrigo Acuna-Agost and Sémi Gabteni, Technical co-chairs

The Anna Valicek Award competition is destined to recognize original and innovative research in the application of operations research to airline and/or airline related business problems. We invite you to submit your research paper before June 1st, 2019!
Refer to the Anna Valicek page for more details on the criteria and eligibility.

Dear AGIFORS community,

Thank you for participation in the study groups chairs election. Below are the winners who will assume their positions in 2020 (except Judith and Michael who are stepping in 2019 already):

• Ops - Judith Semar and Michael E. Irrgang
  
• Crew - Marcel Sol and Samuel Rosat
  
• RM - Virginie Lurkin and Hunkar Toyoglu
  
• SSP - Cumhur Gelogullary and Yuxi Xiao
  

We are actively working on organizing all 4 study group meetings and a special session on MRO that would be combined with Ops/SSP meeting. Please expect communications on the details of the meetings soon.