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America West Airlines Develops Efficient Boarding Strategies

Department of Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University, PO Box 875906, Tempe, Arizona 85287-5906
Department of Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University, PO Box 875906, Tempe, Arizona 85287-5906
Department of Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University, PO Box 875906, Tempe, Arizona 85287-5906
Airport Services, America West Airlines, 111 West Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, Arizona 85281
Airport Services, America West Airlines, 111 West Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, Arizona 85281
menkes{at}asu.edu
rene.villalobos{at}asu.edu
ghogg{at}asu.edu
tim.lindemann{at}americawest.com
anthony.mule{at}americawest.com

In September 2003, America West Airlines implemented a new aircraft boarding strategy that reduces the airline’s average passenger boarding time by over two minutes, or approximately 20 percent, for full and nearly full flights. The strategy, developed by a team of Arizona State University and America West Airline’s personnel, is a hybrid between traditional back-to-front boarding and outside-inside boarding used by other airlines. Field observations, numerical results of analytical models, and simulation studies provided information that resulted in an improved aircraft-boarding strategy termed reverse pyramid. With the new boarding strategy, passengers still have personal seat assignments, but rather than boarding by rows from the back to the front of the airplane, they board in groups minimizing expected passenger interference in the airplane. The analytical, simulation, and implementation results obtained show that the method represents a significant improvement in terms of boarding time over traditional pure back-to-front, outside-inside boarding strategies.

Key Words: transportation: travel; programming: integer; applications

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