The impact that rescheduling aircraft maintenance may have on both the network and maintenance roster is hard to grasp due to the inherent complexity of the problem. Various works have been dedicated to developing methods for recovering a disrupted airline schedule, with the prim
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The impact that rescheduling aircraft maintenance may have on both the network and maintenance roster is hard to grasp due to the inherent complexity of the problem. Various works have been dedicated to developing methods for recovering a disrupted airline schedule, with the primary focus being the recovery of the lines-of-flight in the days after the disruption. More recently, attention has been paid to the specific recovery of aircraft maintenance, constrained by the resources required. However, no comprehensive method exists that combines both network and maintenance scheduling in order to assess the effects of rescheduling maintenance in favor of flight execution. This paper presents a novel framework that provides decision-makers with the opportunity to assess the outcome of a choice they are about to make: what are the short- to medium-term effects of delaying airline maintenance in favor of operating a flight instead of canceling it? At its core lies a mixed-integer programming formulation, which considers a double space-time network, allowing the integral scheduling of network rotations and maintenance tasks in ground slots. A case study involving a heterogeneous fleet of 54 aircraft from a major European airline demonstrated the framework's effectiveness in scheduling 1,886 maintenance tasks and 471 flight rotations across 58 ground slots. The framework shows that preventing a rotation from cancellation by rescheduling maintenance results in approximately 13 schedule changes and 10 hours of additional delay within a two-week period, compared to the same schedule without the maintenance rescheduled. Thus, while the airline has prevented a rotation from cancellation, this came at the cost of multiple scheduling changes and additional network delays. It can be concluded that the initial formulation proves to be beneficial in assisting decision-makers in assessing the implications of delaying aircraft maintenance.