Intelligent Boarding Modelling and Evaluation: A Simulation-Based Approach

The boarding efficiency is essential for all airlines due to potential competitive financial pressure. Therefore, the turnaround time needs to be cut down for a shorter boarding time. The paper devised a feasible boarding strategy which combines the management mode decision of passenger boarding with the intelligent deployment of the operation process and will be likely to improve the efficiency of the passenger travel chain. Among which, to decrease the boarding time is an effective method. Firstly, we proposed an improved outside-in strategy, which costs shorter boarding time based on the existing outside-in strategy. However, this method requires passengers to stand in queue in advance. Secondly, we put forward a deterministic queue-ordered boarding method to improve it. Finally, we simulated and applied the strategy to a narrow-body aircraft A320 and a wide-body A380, both representative for their type of airplanes. It turns out that this strategy performs better than the current widely used method and will be able to increase boarding efficiency and thus maximize the profits of airlines.