"A team of researchers from Dartmouth in Hanover and the University of Coimbra in Portugal have developed a product to assuage delays and disruptions in airline operations that result in billions of dollars of additional cost to airlines and passengers each year," reports Business NH Magazine.

"Airlines currently mitigate these costs by creating schedules that are less likely to get disrupted or schedules that are easy to repair when there are disruptions. But new research in the journal Transportation Science identifies a potential solution using a mathematical optimization model.

"The study, conducted by Vikrant Vaze of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, and David Antunes and Antonio Pais Antunes, both of the University of Coimbra, looks at data from Virgin America from 2014, consisting of 94 daily flights, connecting 14 continental U.S. airports."