Ryanair Spare Aircraft Optimization

This project shows how an airline can decide where to place spare aircraft each day to reduce the cost of delays.

See the interactive demo: Streamlit

See the overall proposed solution benchmark: Google Sheets

Problem formulation

Flights sometimes fail due to technical issues. If a delay exceeds 3 hours, EU261/2004 requires passenger compensation:

• €250 per passenger for flights ≤ 1500 km
• €400 per passenger for flights > 1500 km

A spare aircraft can rescue a disrupted rotation, but keeping spares on standby is expensive. So the key question is:

Where should spares be positioned each day to minimize total expected cost (holding + fuel + compensation)?

How the Solution Works

1. Read the schedule and group flights into daily rotations.
2. Measure distances between airports to see which bases can reach a failure within 3 hours (≈1200 km).
3. Estimate risk by calculating expected compensation for each flight and the remaining legs in its rotation.
4. Optimize placement with a mixed‑integer model that chooses how many spares to keep at each airport per day.
5. Validate the plan with simulated failure scenarios.

What’s in the Repo

• src/notebooks/scenario_analysis.ipynb — step‑by‑step walkthrough of the full pipeline
• models/ — pre‑computed weekly optimization outputs
• scenarios/ — simulation and benchmarking results
• data/ — schedule and airport inputs