Hitit’s Advanced Crane Crew Leave Optimizer
Gurobi Optimization, LLC—widely recognized as a global leader in decision-intelligence and mathematical optimization technologies—announced its pivotal role as the optimization engine supporting Hitit’s advanced crew-leave planning solutions. Hitit, a prominent provider of airline and travel IT systems with customers around the world, has chosen Gurobi as the core solver powering its next-generation crew-management tools, reinforcing a shared commitment to innovation, efficiency, and operational excellence across the aviation industry.
For airlines, crew management represents one of the most complex and sensitive components of operational planning. Ensuring that thousands of crew members receive fair, balanced, and regulation-compliant leave schedules while maintaining the airline’s operational readiness is an enormous challenge—one that historically required extensive manual work, large planning teams, and countless hours of coordination. Many airlines have long struggled to balance organizational priorities, legal requirements, seniority-based rules, personal preferences, and daily operational constraints, often making the leave-planning process inefficient and stressful for both planners and crew members.
To address this long-standing industry pain point, Hitit developed the Crane Crew Leave Optimizer, a powerful module within its broader Crane Crew suite. This solution was designed to transform how airlines handle crew leave planning—from a heavily manual process to one that is automated, transparent, and mathematically optimized. At the core of this transformation is Gurobi’s high-performance optimization solver, which enables the system to process vast amounts of data, evaluate numerous constraints simultaneously, and generate the best possible leave assignments within seconds.
Traditionally, creating annual leave plans for large airlines required weeks of work. Planners had to gather leave requests, factor in legal rest requirements, ensure adequate staffing coverage, and consider crew preferences. A single miscalculation could lead to scheduling conflicts, under-staffed routes, or unfair leave distribution, resulting in crew dissatisfaction or even regulatory issues. As air travel networks grew more complex and crews expanded, these challenges intensified, making manual planning increasingly impractical.
Hitit’s Crane Crew Leave Optimizer changes the game entirely. By combining advanced optimization models with real-time operational rules, the system can automatically evaluate thousands of possible scheduling configurations. It then selects the leave schedule that provides the ideal balance between crew satisfaction and operational feasibility. Personal preferences and seniority rankings are handled fairly, while the solver ensures that key business constraints—such as minimum staffing levels or peak-season availability—are strictly respected.
One of the most transformative aspects of the system is the speed at which it produces results. Airlines that once spent weeks creating leave schedules can now complete the entire process in mere seconds. Crew members submit their leave bids through a modern mobile interface, allowing them to easily review their options and participate in a transparent, fair bidding process. Behind the scenes, Hitit’s system, powered by Gurobi, instantly calculates the optimal solution, providing planners with accurate, ready-to-use schedules.
This leap in speed is matched by significant improvements in accuracy and fairness. Since the optimization engine evaluates all constraints simultaneously—something nearly impossible for human planners—it produces schedules that minimize conflicts and maximize compliance. The tool reduces human error, ensures consistency, and supports better communication between crew members and planning departments.
Hitit CEO Nevra Onursal Karaağaç emphasized how critical the partnership with Gurobi has been in bringing this vision to life. She explained that integrating Gurobi’s solver allowed Hitit to address the full complexity of crew leave planning using a scalable, data-driven methodology. Instead of relying on manual processes prone to bias, oversight, or inefficiency, the combined solution delivers a systematic, optimized outcome every time. According to Karaağaç, this collaboration has “transformed a manual, error-prone task into a fast and fair optimization process,” giving airlines a powerful new tool to enhance crew well-being and operational performance.
Crew members, she noted, are at the heart of every airline’s operations. Their work schedules, rest periods, and personal time off directly influence safety, service quality, and morale. When leave planning is equitable and transparent, crew members feel respected and valued, which ultimately contributes to better performance across the airline. In a competitive industry where labor shortages and crew fatigue have become widespread concerns, this kind of improvement is especially meaningful.
Adding to the discussion, Duke Perrucci, CEO of Gurobi Optimization, highlighted the importance of thoughtful crew-leave planning in today’s aviation environment. He acknowledged that while mathematical optimization may operate behind the scenes, its impact on both employees and operations is significant and tangible. By providing airlines with the analytical power needed to craft fair, efficient schedules, Gurobi’s solver helps reduce administrative burdens while supporting stronger, more predictable operations. Perrucci noted that the partnership with Hitit demonstrates how mathematical optimization can deliver real value when embedded into sophisticated industry-specific solutions.
The aviation sector is increasingly turning to automation and data-driven decision systems to navigate challenges such as fluctuating demand, workforce shortages, and rising operational complexity. Crew management, in particular, is an area where small improvements can yield major gains in performance and cost efficiency. With demand for air travel rebounding globally, airlines face mounting pressure to ensure that their operational processes—including crew scheduling, rostering, and leave allocation—are as efficient as possible. Solutions like Hitit’s Crane Crew Leave Optimizer provide airlines with the tools needed to stay agile and competitive.
Hitit’s broader Crane Crew platform already plays a central role in helping airlines manage crew assignments, duty rosters, and regulatory compliance. The Leave Optimizer augments these capabilities by ensuring that long-term leave planning is seamlessly integrated with day-to-day scheduling. As a result, airlines benefit from a fully unified system that reduces planning bottlenecks, improves resource allocation, and boosts workforce satisfaction.
Customer feedback from airlines already using the solution has been overwhelmingly positive. Many report that the automation and optimization capabilities have not only shortened planning cycles but also reduced internal disputes related to leave fairness. Planners appreciate the dramatic reduction in manual work, while crew members value the system’s transparency and fairness. The combination of speed, accuracy, and improved user experience positions the solution as one of the most advanced leave-planning tools available in the market today.
The collaboration between Hitit and Gurobi highlights a growing trend within the travel and aviation industries: the shift toward intelligent, automated decision-support tools capable of handling complex, multidimensional problems. As airlines seek to modernize their operations and increase workforce satisfaction, partnerships like this one will continue to shape the future of aviation technology.
In an era where operational efficiency and employee satisfaction are equally vital, Hitit and Gurobi’s joint solution stands as a leading example of innovation with meaningful real-world impact.
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