America West Airlines Develops Efficient Boarding Strategies

Abstract

In September 2003, America West Airlines implemented a new aircraft boarding strategy that reduces the airline’s average passenger boarding time by over two minutes, or approximately 20 percent, for full and nearly full flights. The strategy, developed by a team of Arizona State University and America West Airline’s personnel, is a hybrid between traditional back-to-front boarding and outside-inside boarding used by other airlines. Field observations, numerical results of analytical models, and simulation studies provided information that resulted in an improved aircraft-boarding strategy termed reverse pyramid. With the new boarding strategy, passengers still have personal seat assignments, but rather than boarding by rows from the back to the front of the airplane, they board in groups minimizing expected passenger interference in the airplane. The analytical, simulation, and implementation results obtained show that the method represents a significant improvement in terms of boarding time over traditional pure back-to-front, outside-inside boarding strategies.

Analysis of Airplane Boarding Times

“…It is therefore not surprising that seat type classes and other outside-in boarding policies prove to be optimal with respect to this measure. Van den Briel et al (2005) report on the success of a change in policy at America West airlines. They converted from a (non-uniform) back-to-front policy to a policy which which they call reverse pyramid.…”

“…Significant reductions in gate delays would improve on the quality of life for long-suffering air travelers, and yield significant economic benefits from more efficient use of aircraft and airport infrastructure. (See Van Landeghem and Beuselinck (2002), Marelli et al (1998) and Van den Briel et al (2005). )…”

Non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear programming: A survey

“…These include avoiding trim-loss in the paper industry [30], airplane boarding [31], oil-spill response planning [32], ethanol supply chains [33], concrete structure design [34], and loadbearing thermal insulation systems [35]. There are also medical applications, such as seizure prediction [36].…”

Comparative Study of Aircraft Boarding Strategies Using Cellular Discrete Event Simulation

“…The most difficult factor to control is passenger boarding time since airlines have little control over passengers. 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].…”

“…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.…”