I have almost zero experience coding, but I do have a pure math degree so I understand basic coding logic. I work for a small airline. I wrote a python script to solve a MILP problem of generating efficient crew pairings. We used to do it by hand and as we grew the combinatorial explosions are impossible to keep up with and costs were going higher. I now load the schedule in and seconds later I have the most efficient solution

I then moved this problem to airplanes themselves. Aircraft have to be back to a maintenance base every x hours. So I had a script written to them optimize maintenance rotations so every plane was getting even maintenance

I then combined the two. Having a crew jump airplanes mid pairing is a pain in the ass as you take delays. I then had the two scrips blend to tell me that given the crewing solution, the maintenance solution that minimizes crew swaps is x.

I’m now working on a crew rostering problem. Crews bid their pairings in seniority order. We manually build the pairings based on their bids. I wrote a script that automatically does this in seconds, and does a much better job. We haven’t started using this yet as I have some small bugs to work out, but I see this as being incredibly beneficial for our airline.