This thesis is about solving the manpower planning problem concerning stangand transitioning of pilots. The objective of the planning is to have enoughpilots to satisfy the demand while minimizing the cost. The main decisions totake are how many pilots to hire, which pilots to train and which courses toschedule. The planning problems that arise are both large and dicult whichmakes it important to use ecient solution methods. Seniority rules betweenpairs of pilots are the most complicating factor.A major part in the solution process is the solving of mixed integer programs.The emphasis in the thesis is to develop and test adaptations of the branch andbound algorithm to solve mixed integer programs faster. One of these is abranching principle that takes a problem specic structure into account. Agraph of implications is constructed from the seniority rules and this graph isthen used to estimate the impact of each branching candidate. The implementedmethods outperform the software XPRESS on some instances, while for mostinstances the performance is comparable.