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The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Operational decision · 2022-2024

American's HEAT tool cut weather cancellations by up to 80%.

American Airlines built HEAT, an optimizer that re-times flights during thunderstorms, keeping planes moving and preventing close to a thousand cancellations.

American Airlines

the move

Thunderstorms regularly shut down airport capacity, and airlines have only minutes to decide what to fly. American's operations control team historically defaulted to canceling large numbers of flights because there was no time to reason through every consequence.

American's Operations Research team built HEAT, which mathematically re-times departures around a weather disruption. Rather than treating each flight in isolation, it looks at the whole hub network and picks departure times that keep aircraft turning even when the storm temporarily cuts landing and takeoff slots.

Deployed in April 2022, HEAT has been used over a hundred times during summer severe-weather events at American's busiest hubs. An independent analysis found that at Dallas-Fort Worth, HEAT usage cut cancellations by up to 80% versus comparable weather events without it.

why it works

  • Disruptions arrive faster than humans can re-plan a whole hub
  • Re-timing a flight is cheaper than canceling it because the aircraft keeps earning
  • The optimizer considers fleet, crew and passenger connections simultaneously
  • A measurable before-after study proved it worked before wider rollout
the payoffRe-time flights to keep the operation flowing, not cancelclever

what transfers

When a disruption hits, the instinct is to cancel; the better move is to re-sequence the schedule so the aircraft and crews keep circulating.

what came after

HEAT prevented nearly 1,000 cancellations and diversions across American's network. It was named a 2024 Franz Edelman Award finalist, and American continued expanding the tool into machine learning and AI-based decision support across operations control.

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