A study of the airline boarding problem

Nyquist, David C.; McFadden, Kathleen L.

doi:10.1016/j.jairtraman.2008.04.004

Cited by 99 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Comprehensive overviews are provided by Schmidt for aircraft turnaround [17], by Jaehn and Neumann for boarding [18], and by Nyquist and McFadden [19] and Mirza [20] for the corresponding economic impact. Relevant studies concerning aircraft boarding strategies include, but are not limited to, the following examples.…”

Section: Status Quomentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Aircraft Turnaround Enabled by Reliable Passenger Boarding

Schultz

2018

Aerospace

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Future 4D aircraft trajectories demand comprehensive consideration of environmental, economic, and operational constraints, as well as reliable prediction of all aircraft-related processes. Mutual interdependencies between airports result in system-wide, far-reaching effects in the air traffic network (reactionary delays). To comply with airline/airport challenges over the day of operations, a change to an air-to-air perspective is necessary, with a specific focus on the aircraft ground operations as major driver for airline punctuality. Aircraft ground trajectories primarily consists of handling processes at the stand (deboarding, catering, fueling, cleaning, boarding, unloading, loading), which are defined as the aircraft turnaround. Turnaround processes are mainly controlled by ground handling, airport, or airline staff, except the aircraft boarding, which is driven by passengers' experience and willingness/ability to follow the proposed boarding procedures. This paper provides an overview of the research done in the field of aircraft boarding and introduces a reliable, calibrated, and stochastic aircraft boarding model. The stochastic boarding model is implemented in a simulation environment to evaluate specific boarding scenarios using different boarding strategies and innovative technologies. Furthermore, the potential of a connected aircraft cabin as sensor network is emphasized, which could provide information on the current and future status of the boarding process.

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Section: Status Quomentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast Aircraft Turnaround Enabled by Reliable Passenger Boarding

Schultz

2018

Aerospace

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“…There are many ways to improve the boarding process and various procedures have been implemented that designate a predefined series of passengers entering the aircraft depending on their assigned seats [27,28]. To determine the efficiency, three different boarding options are simulated, as shown in Figure 6:…”

Section: Boarding Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Generic Approach to Analyze the Impact of a Future Aircraft Design on the Boarding Process

et al. 2018

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Abstract:The turnaround process constitutes an important part of the air transportation system. Airports often represent bottlenecks in air traffic management (ATM), thus operations related to the preparation of the aircraft for the next flight leg have to be executed smoothly and in a timely manner. The ATM significantly depends on a reliable turnaround process. Future paradigm changes with respect to airplane energy sources, aircraft design or propulsion concepts will also influence the airport layout. As a consequence, operational processes associated with the turnaround will be affected. Airlines aim for efficient and timely turnaround operations that are correlated with higher profits. This case study discusses an approach to investigate a new aircraft design with respect to the implications on the turnaround. The boarding process, as part of the turnaround, serves as an example to evaluate the consequences of new design concepts. This study is part of an interdisciplinary research to investigate future energy, propulsion and designs concepts and their implications on the whole ATM system. Due to these new concepts, several processes of the turnaround will be affected. For example, new energy storage concepts will influence the fueling process on the aircraft itself or might lead to a new infrastructure at the airport. This paper aims to evaluate the applied methodology in the case of a new boarding process, due to a new aircraft design, by means of a generic example. An agent-based boarding simulation is applied to assess passenger behavior during boarding, particularly with regard to cabin layout and seat configuration. The results of the generic boarding simulation are integrated into a simplified, deterministic and generic simulation of the turnaround process. This was done to assess the proposed framework for future investigations which on the one hand address the ATM system holistically and on the other, incorporate additional or adapted processes of the turnaround.

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“…Therefore, airlines have to be cautious in making changes to reduce boarding time [2]. Many researchers have proposed and investigated different boarding strategies aiming at reducing the boarding time even by a couple of minutes [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Among the existing boarding strategies, the following are the most well-known techniques: Back-to-Front, Random Strategy, Outside-in (or Window Middle Aisle), Rotating zone, Reverse Pyramid, Optimal, Practical Optimal and Efficient Strategy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Study of Aircraft Boarding Strategies Using Cellular Discrete Event Simulation

Jafer

2017

Aerospace

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Time is crucial in the airlines industry. Among all factors contributing to an aircraft turnaround time; passenger boarding delays is the most challenging one. Airlines do not have control over the behavior of passengers; thus, focusing their effort on reducing passenger boarding time through implementing efficient boarding strategies. In this work, we attempt to use cellular Discrete-Event System Specification (Cell-DEVS) modeling and simulation to provide a comprehensive evaluation of aircraft boarding strategies. We have developed a simulation benchmark consisting of eight boarding strategies including Back-to-Front; Window Middle Aisle; Random; Zone Rotate; Reverse Pyramid; Optimal; Optimal Practical; and Efficient. Our simulation models are scalable and adaptive; providing a powerful analysis apparatus for investigating any existing or yet to be discovered boarding strategy. We explain the details of our models and present the results both visually and numerically to evaluate the eight implemented boarding strategies. We also compare our results with other studies that have used different modeling techniques; reporting nearly identical performance results. The simulations revealed that Window Middle Aisle provides the least boarding delay; with a small fraction of time difference compared to the optimal strategy. The results of this work could highly benefit the commercial airlines industry by optimizing and reducing passenger boarding delays.

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A study of the airline boarding problem

Cited by 99 publications

References 4 publications

Fast Aircraft Turnaround Enabled by Reliable Passenger Boarding

Fast Aircraft Turnaround Enabled by Reliable Passenger Boarding

A Generic Approach to Analyze the Impact of a Future Aircraft Design on the Boarding Process

Comparative Study of Aircraft Boarding Strategies Using Cellular Discrete Event Simulation

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