Towards balancing efficiency and customer satisfaction in airplane boarding: An agent-based approach

The airplane boarding process, which can have a significant impact on a flight’s turnaround time, is often viewed by researchers and airlines primarily in terms of minimizing total boarding time (TBT). Airplane capacity, number of passengers on board, amount of luggage, and boarding strategy are common factors that affect TBT. However, besides operational efficiency, airlines are also concerned with customer satisfaction, which affects customer loyalty and financial return. One factor that influences passenger experience is the individual boarding time (IBT), here defined by the time passengers stand inside the cabin. Considering these two aspects, an agent-based model is presented that compares the performance of three alternative mainstream boarding strategies in a 132-seat and a 160-seat single-aisle commercial airplane. An important characteristic of the model that differentiates it from previous work is that overhead bins have a physical limitation, which could lead to an increase in aisle interferences on full flights as passengers take longer to find a place for their carry-on luggage. Another important contribution is the analysis of how passenger seat location affects IBT. Our results show that outside-in (OI) produces shorter TBT than random and back-to-front boarding, and also shorter IBT and much shorter maximum IBT than BTF, particularly for passengers seated in the middle of the airplane. This suggests that among the three most popular boarding strategies used by airlines across the world, OI is the best when it comes to balancing airplane boarding efficiency with individual customer satisfaction. •Addressed research gap: customer satisfaction and airplane boarding efficiency.•Agent-based simulation of random, back-to-front, and outside-in airplane boarding.•Considered limited luggage bin capacity.•Outside-in boarding performed best in terms of total and also individual boarding times.•The position of the seat affects the individual boarding time of a passenger.