Arranging the order of passengers on the boarding bridge to reduce the boarding time for single-aisle aircraft

Abstract: Reducing the aircraft boarding time is a common problem not only for airlines, but also for passengers and airports. Group boarding is a popular boarding strategy that separates the passengers into several groups and those groups, which are then called in a certain order. Group boarding can reduce the boarding time compared with that in random order boarding; however, it is insufficient in several real scenarios because the passengers are not separated strictly into groups. In this paper, we propose a boarding strategy that arranges the order of the boarding passengers at the boarding gate. Although this approach appears more time-consuming, we show that such a rearrangement can be applied efficiently to the waiting queue of a single-aisle aircraft. We quantitatively demonstrate the boarding times for various patterns of this approach and discuss the mechanism underlying the reduction of boarding time. This strategy is a promising approach to reduce boarding times and can replace the conventional boarding strategy.