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Analysis of Airplane Boarding Times

Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
Departments of Mathematics and Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
Department of Applied Mathematics, Holon Institute of Technology, and Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
Department of Computer Science, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794
Department of Computer Science, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
ebachmat{at}cs.bgu.ac.il
berend{at}cs.bgu.ac.il
lsapir{at}bgu.ac.il
skiena{at}cs.sunysb.edu
stolyarov{at}cs.bgu.ac.il

We model and analyze the process of passengers boarding an airplane. We show how the model yields closed-form estimates for the expected boarding time in many cases of interest. Comparison of our computations with previous work, based on discrete-event simulations, shows a high degree of agreement. Analysis of the model reveals a clear link between the efficiency of various airline boarding policies and a congestion parameter that is related to interior airplane design parameters, such as distance between rows. In particular, as congestion increases, random boarding becomes more attractive among row-based policies.

Subject classifications: air transportation; stochastic modeling application; space-time geometry; airplane boarding.
History: Received December 2005; revision received October 2007; accepted December 2007.