| IBM Haifa Research Lab has developed an aircraft assignment system
for El-Al Israeli Airlines using IF/Prolog with Constraint
Technology Package.
This project was aimed to save operational costs and reduce the use
of hired airport authority parking slots which are heavily priced.
The system is connected on-line to EL-Al's scheduling system
and is updated in real time as to flight schedule changes. El-Al owns
a dozen parking slots with different characteristics. Some of them
are suitable only for certain types of aircraft maintenance activities,
there are constraints on whether passengers up/download can be
performed on specific parking slots.
The solvers run is limited to a couple of minutes, and different
strategies where used in order to quickly converge on a good solution.
The system was develped on NT and is operational for more than 6 months.
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