Passenger disembarkation is an important handling process and takes place in the confined space of the aircraft cabin. While boarding can be controlled to a certain extent, passenger disembarkation at the end of a flight takes place in a less controllable environment. Under the current COVID 19 boundary conditions, cabin processes must not only be efficient in terms of time but also significantly reduce any potential risk of virus transmission to passengers. For this complex challenge, we have developed a novel mathematical model that takes these conflicting objective functions into account to optimize the disembarkation process. Using already enhanced seat allocations, we have developed a genetic algorithm that can generate enhanced disembarkation sequences for groups of passengers (e.g. families or couples). The selected use cases for seat loads of 50%, 66%, and 100% indicate a significant reduction in 40% disembarkation time when physical distances between passenger groups are mandatory to satisfy pandemic regulations. To inform passenger groups about the disembarkation sequences, we propose to activate the cabin lights at the seats in a dedicated way. That means that our developed methodology could already be applied to actual flights.
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