International Journal of Advancements in Technology
Open Access

Abstract

An Optimal Strategy of Aircraft Turnaround Time for Passenger Boarding

Elaheh Ghobrani, Fred Barez

Airline passenger boarding is generally time consuming and not a pleasant experience for passengers and costly for airlines. Airlines lose money due to inefficiency in plane boarding as they like to have their planes in the air in the minimum possible time. In order to accelerate the boarding process, turnaround time of passenger boarding (TAT passenger boarding) simulations are carried out to improve this process. The turnaround time (TAT) is defined as the time required for an aircraft on the ground to be prepared for the departure from its arrival time at the gate. Based on the number of passengers, arrival rate, passenger boarding sequence, and aircraft type, various boarding strategies are employed by airlines to reduce TAT passenger boarding. These strategies could be as random, outside-in, back-to-front, block boarding, Steffen and two-entry boarding. Moreover there is combination of any these strategies such as outside-in and back-to-front. Despite these strategies, TAT is still a bottleneck in bringing the passengers to their seats and getting the plane to take-off in an efficient time.

There are some studies to optimize boarding strategy with the minimum TAT passenger boarding and a reliable predictability of duration time. One study mentions TAT passenger boarding with the interferences between passengers. The results recommend a lower number of interferences happen when the neighboring passengers accommodate to board together. In another study, the analyses show that the needed time to place the baggage depends on the occurrence of seats and aisle interference. It is suggested the use of jetways as a new strategy for boarding passengers.  

The objective of this study is to identify factors that adversely affect TAT passenger boarding. These factors are grouped in three categories: the aircraft, the boarding strategy and human factor. In this study it is assumed that the aircraft seat layout is single aisle and two couple seats for each side of a row, such as Embraer ERJ-75, and Bombardier CRJ-700. The strategy takes in boarding, should include a minimum TAT passenger boarding, t_minimum, with less TAT passenger boarding fluctuations and minimum number groups with maximum number of passengers in each group including family or friendly subgroups.  t_minimum is obtained by a stochastic model; assuming the seats and aisle layouts are located on a grid consisting of equal cells is employed using Monte Carlo simulation technique in order to minimize the TAT passenger boarding. In real world we cannot have always t_minimum while the nature of this problem is stochastic. In order to reach the minimum TAT passenger boarding, the interferences among the passengers decrease by using a new strategy while it is not zero like Steffen strategy. Steffen strategy has zero interference however it is not practicable solution for passenger boarding. It is given up in this study. The length of TAT passenger boarding fluctuation interval is a benchmark to compare results of different strategies together. The comparison of results for the seat layout 5 to 20 rows with single aisle shows the most optimal strategy is new strategy.

Published Date: 2020-11-11; Received Date: 2020-11-11