Hitit and Gurobi Collaborate to Transform Crew Leave Planning with Human-Centric Optimization

Hitit and Gurobi Collaborate to Transform Crew Leave Planning with Human-Centric Optimization

Combining Hitit’s deep operational expertise with Gurobi’s mathematical optimization capabilities, the Crane Crew Leave Optimizer brings a new level of fairness, transparency, and efficiency to crew planning. This partnership reflects Hitit’s commitment to uniting technology and empathy—empowering airlines to create operational excellence while enhancing employee well-being. 

 

Istanbul – BEAVERTON, Ore. – 20.11.2025. – As part of its ongoing mission to deliver next-generation airline technologies, Hitit has further enhanced its Crane Crew platform by integrating advanced mathematical optimization capabilities powered by Gurobi Optimization, a leader in decision intelligence technology.

Crane Crew, one of Hitit’s flagship products within the Crane Solution Suite, is a comprehensive crew management system used by many of Hitit’s Partner airlines across the world. Built on modular architecture and advanced optimization algorithms, Crane Crew addresses one of the most critical areas of airline operations: crew planning.

Among Crane Crew’s submodules, the Crane Crew Leave Optimizer stands out as a leading solution in the industry, designed to balance the delicate dynamics of operational requirements, business rules, seniority, and crew preferences during leave scheduling. This solution, developed in partnership with Gurobi, brings cutting-edge optimization technology to one of the most sensitive components of an airline’s internal operations.

“Coordinating annual leaves for airline crew members is a process that can take weeks with traditional, manual approaches,” said Ms. Nevra Onursal Karaağaç, CEO, at Hitit. “Before switching to Hitit’s software, many of our Partner airlines used Excel-based systems, which can be extremely inefficient and prone to errors.”

Among the many constraints that airlines must consider are operational requirements, business rules, crew seniority, and personal preferences. As such, manual planning efforts can often lead to inefficiencies, crew dissatisfaction, and compliance risks.

After switching to Crane Crew, Hitit’s Partner airlines have reported significant improvements. What once took weeks to accomplish can now be completed in as little as seconds, with leave bids submitted via a streamlined mobile application, and optimal plans generated automatically.

“These advancements have been made possible through Hitit’s collaboration with Gurobi.” explained Ms. Karaağaç. “By integrating Gurobi’s industry-leading solver into its planning system, we have been able to tackle the complexity of leave planning with a data-driven, scalable approach—transforming a manual, error-prone task into a fast and fair optimization process.”

“Crew members play an essential role in every airline’s success. Planning annual leave periods in a way that not only maximizes efficiency, but also crew satisfaction, is critical,” said Duke Perrucci, CEO of Gurobi Optimization. “By leveraging mathematical optimization, Hitit creates plans that deliver tangible value for both airlines and their employees.”

Discover how Hitit, in strategic collaboration with Gurobi, has successfully optimized airline crew leave planning by reading our comprehensive case study.