Lorentzian geometry and variability reduction in airplane boarding: Slow passengers first outperforms random boarding

Area of Science:

• Operations Research
• Transportation Science
• Applied Mathematics

Background:

• Airlines employ various boarding policies to manage passenger flow.
• Optimizing boarding processes is crucial for airline efficiency and passenger experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze and compare different airline boarding policies.
• To determine the impact of passenger separation on total boarding time.

Main Methods:

• Geometric representation of passenger queue position and row designation.
• Application of a Lorentzian metric to calculate total boarding time.
• Analysis of aisle-clearing time distribution and effective aisle-clearing time.

Main Results:

• Non-organized queues (random boarding) result in larger effective aisle-clearing times.
• Separating passengers by boarding speed (slow first) universally reduces average total boarding time.
• This reduction holds across various parameter settings, including aisle-clearing time ratios, passenger fractions, and aisle congestion.

Conclusions:

• A slow-first boarding policy, based on aisle-clearing time, is more efficient than random boarding.
• Empirical data suggests an 8% reduction in boarding time using this method.
• The findings highlight the benefits of synchronized seating achieved through optimized boarding strategies.