The use of apron buses for transporting passengers from the airport terminal to the airplane has become common practice for a series of airports worldwide. Airline companies have become increasingly aware of this practice and have added information to their boarding passes to suggest the airplane door passengers should use while boarding the airplane. In contrast, many of the literature's methods to reduce boarding time assume the presence of a jet-bridge connecting the airplane to the terminal. These boarding methods are ''by seat'' and ''by group'' methods. The use of the apron buses for passengers' transport limits the usage of these methods because, in most cases now, only two apron buses are needed for transporting the passengers. With two apron buses, boarding control is limited to deciding on which passengers to assign to each of the two buses. We propose 15 new methods that we tested against the previously published Back-to-front method adapted for the apron buses case, by considering 7 luggage situations. An agent-based model in NetLogo is created based on field trials and considerations made in the literature, and we used this model for simulations. Experimental results show that the best performing proposed methods combine aspects of the WilMA and Reverse Pyramid boarding methods adapted for apron buses. The best proposed method can reduce boarding time by up to 39.2% when compared to the benchmark Back-to-front method.INDEX TERMS Airplane boarding, apron buses, agent-based modeling, two-door boarding, boarding strategies, NetLogo.
Social distancing reduces the risk of people becoming infected with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). When passengers are transported from an airport terminal to an airplane using apron buses, safe social distancing during pandemic times reduces the capacity of the apron buses and has led to the practice of airlines keeping the middle seats of the airplanes unoccupied. This paper adapts classical boarding methods so that they may be used with social distancing and apron buses. We conduct stochastic simulation experiments to assess nine adaptations of boarding methods according to four performance metrics. Three of the metrics are related to the risk of the virus spreading to passengers during boarding. The fourth metric is the time to complete boarding of the two-door airplane when apron bus transport passengers to the airplane. Our experiments assume that passengers advancing to their airplane seats are separated by an aisle social distance of 1 m or 2 m. Numerical results indicate that the three variations (adaptations) of the Reverse pyramid method are the best candidates for airlines to consider in this socially distanced context. The particular adaptation to use depends on an airline's relative preference for having short boarding times versus a reduced risk of later boarding passengers passing (and thereby possibly infecting) previously seated window seat passengers. If an airline considers the latter risk to be unimportant, then the Reverse pyramid-Spread method would be the best choice because it provides the fastest time to board the airplane and is tied for the best values for the other two health risk measures.
Social distancing resulting from the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) has disrupted the airplane boarding process. Social distancing norms reduce airplane capacity by keeping the middle seats unoccupied, while an imposed aisle social distance between boarding passengers slows the boarding. Recent literature suggests the Reverse Pyramid boarding method is a promising way to reduce health risk and keep boarding times low when 10 apron buses (essentially 10 boarding groups) are used to transport passengers from the airport terminal to a two-door airplane. We adapt the Reverse Pyramid method for social distancing when an airplane is boarded using a jet bridge that connects the terminal the airplane’s front door. We vary the number of boarding groups from two to six and use stochastic simulation and agent-based modelling to show the resulting impact on four performance evaluation metrics. Increasing the number of boarding groups from two to six reduces boarding time only up to four groups but continues to reduce infection risk up to six groups. If the passengers carry fewer luggage aboard the airplane, health risks (as well as boarding times) decrease. One adaptation of the Reverse Pyramid (RP) method (RP-Spread) provides slightly faster boarding times than the other (RP-Steep), when luggage volumes are high, while RP-Steep results in less risk to window seat passengers from later-boarding passengers walking by their row. Increasing the minimum aisle social distance from 1 m to 2 m increases boarding times but results in lower health risks to passengers walking down the aisle and to the previously seated passengers they pass.
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