Speeding the Boarding Process

Modern airline travel is all about waiting in line. You wait to have your car inspected entering the airport. You wait in line at the ticket counter. You wait in line at the security checkpoint. Then you wait at the jetway to finally get to your seat.

Airlines don’t like the lines either, especially at the jetway. Every minute a plane stays on the tarmac is a minute the airline is not making money. Rene Villalobos is trying to help speed the line, at least at the jetway.

Villalobos is a professor of industrial engineering at Arizona State University. He and graduate student Menkes Van Den Briel designed a new group boarding system that speeds people through the jetway and to their assigned seats on the plane. Tempe-based America West Airlines will test the new system during summer 2003.

Most airlines board passengers in an airplane’s coach section by rows. First to board are passengers with seats in the back of the plane. At America West, gate agents can decide how many rows to board at one time.

The airline asked Villalobos to examine if a standardized group boarding system, in which each group includes certain rows, would be beneficial. In addition, Villalobos and his team of students explored alternate boarding strategies such as outside-in, which boards window, middle, and aisle seats in different groups.

The ASU team did their homework. Van Den Briel and America West personnel filmed passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) walking down the jetway and boarding aircraft. They collected data on passengers’ walk speed, luggage speed, and arrival rate. They also looked at the percentage of parties of one, two, three, etc., as well as the amount of time passengers had to wait while someone else blocked the aisle or their row.

Using this data, Villalobos’ laboratory developed a computer simulation to compare various boarding methods. They found that neither a true back-to-front nor outside-in strategy optimized boarding time. Rather, for a six-group system, a hybrid “reverse pyramid” strategy reduced boarding time the most.

The engineers tested this strategy at America West gates at LAX. They found that the reverse pyramid did indeed reduce boarding time, IF the gate agents were trained in the strategy. America West is now using the boarding strategy at LAX. It could be implemented at all America West gates later in 2003.

“Many students were involved in this project,” Villalobos says. “They had the opportunity to start with a problem, develop a model, and see their solutions applied, which is something I hope we can do more and more at ASU.” —Linley Erin Hall