The Unique Best Boarding Plan? It Depends...

杨利霞

The Unique Best Boarding Plan?
It Depends...
Bolun Liu
Xuan Hou
Hao Wang
National University of Singapore
Advisor: Yannis Yatracos
Summary
We devise and compare strategies for boarding and deboarding planes of
varying capacity. We clarify what properties a good strategy should have.
We apply the same assumptions regarding basic boarding procedure, inner
structure of planes, and behavior of passengers to all the cases.
For boarding, we study prevailing strategies and a seemingly excellent strat
egy, seat-by-seat, proposed in past literature, and categorize them into two
types, assigned-seating and open-seating. We develop a model and a simula
tion for each type. Our criteria identify two good candidates, reverse-pyramid
and open-seating. We develop our own comprehensive strategy simulate it,
and compare it with those two. However, the optimal boarding strategy is
not the same for different planes. Some values of parameters, such as the pas
sengers' luggage size and weight, greatly influence the final result. Based on
these discoveries, we suggest how to modify a boarding procedure in practice
to make it optimal.
For deboarding, a simple strategy beats a complicated one; but we still
give a theoretically optimal model, then modify it to achieve a concise strategy
applicable in practice.