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.

At the 2018 AGIFORS Symposium in Tokyo, Nuno Antunes Ribeiro has been recognized as Winner of the 2018 Anna Valicek Award for the paper “An optimization approach for airport slot allocation under IATA guidelines”. See the Anna Valicek page for more details.

AGIFORS is conducting an election to determine the two Chairs of each of the four active Study Groups. Voting opens on Friday, 30 November 2018 and is open for two weeks. Eligible voters will receive an email with a link to the poll. Details about the process and information about all candidates can be found here: Study Group Chair Elections 2018. 

The AGIFORS Council has been expanded to include two additional Members. Rodrigo Acuna-Agost will share the role of Symposium Technical Chair with Semi Gabteni. Sergey Shebalov is taking over the role of Study Group Coordinator from John-Paul Clarke, who will remain on the Council as AGIFORS Secretary. 

Specifically, the AGIFORS Council is seeking nominees who are willing to serve a three-year term as a co-Chair of one of our four Study Groups. 

As you know, Study Groups are an integral part of what we do in AGIFORS. They provide a home for members who share a common interest––whether it be crew management, airline operations, revenue management, or scheduling and strategic planning––and a venue to which we return each Spring to learn about the latest thinking and advancements in our specific field of interest. Thus, it is critically important that these study groups have active and dedicated leadership.
 
So, if you are (or know someone who is) willing to contribute to the advancement of airline OR by serving as a Study Group co-Chair, please send a short bio (no longer than 150 words in length) to the Study Group Coordinator, Sergey Shebalov (Sergey.Shebalov@agifors.org) and the AGIFORS Secretary, John-Paul Clarke (secretary@agifors.org) on or before Friday 26 October.
 
Self nominations are strongly encouraged. That said, if you decide to nominate someone else, please make sure they agree with being nominated. 

From a total of 14 submitted articles the 2018 Anna Valicek Award Committee has selected the two finalists for the 2018 Anna Valicek Award

• Nuno Antunes Ribeiro, CITTA, University of Coimbra Polo II: “An optimization approach for airport slot allocation under IATA guidelines”
  
• Adam Bockelie, MIT ICAT: “Total Revenue Optimization with the Ancillary Marginal Demand and Ancillary Marginal Revenue Transformation Heuristics”
  

As finalists, they will present their work at the upcoming AGIFORS Symposium, to be held in Tokyo, Japan, on October 8-12, 2018. Then, the AGIFORS Council will select the winner of the 2018 Anna Valicek Award.  Given the exceptional quality of the articles submitted this year, 2 Honorable Mentions have been awarded as well. Read more on the Anna Valicek Award page.