A multi-agent system approach to a sumulation study comparing the performance of aircraft boarding using pre-assigned seating and free-for-all strategies

Livermore, R. (2008). A multi-agent system approach to a sumulation study comparing the performance of aircraft boarding using pre-assigned seating and free-for-all strategies. Student dissertation for The Open University module M801 MSc in Software Development Research Dissertation.

Please note that this student dissertation is made available in the format that it was submitted for examination, thus the author has not been able to correct errors and/or departures from academic standards in areas such as referencing.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00016077

Abstract

Achieving true efficiency is an important commercial driver for airlines and can be of huge value in differentiating them in a competitive marketplace. The aircraft boarding process remains a relatively unstudied area in this regard and is perhaps one of the few remaining standard airline operations where significant improvements may still be delivered. Studies to date have focused on improving the process by applying varying levels of control to passenger ordering as they enter the aircraft. However, passenger actions and interactions are, by their nature, governed by an element of chance and so the natural state of the boarding system tends towards randomness. In acknowledgement of this fact, this simulation-based study investigates the performance of the boarding process when controls are relaxed to a greater or lesser degrees. It investigates whether multi-agent systems are appropriate for simulating stochastic processes by comparison with baseline results and whether they allow real conclusion to be drawn on the relative merits of different boarding systems. The results produced by this work cannot be statistically proven to be the same as the baseline and thus it cannot be said in this context that multi-agent systems are appropriate for simulating stochastic processes. However, in relative terms, the findings of this work do appear to follow the patterns hypothesised in earlier studies - that is that boarding using pre-assigned seating but with no correlation between the order passengers enter the aircraft and the position of their seat is preferable over a range of different scenarios to Free-for-All boarding. This has allowed useful future work to be identified that will ensure that the results presented in this study are built upon in a more comprehensive manner to develop a fuller picture of the types of passenger interaction and interference that cause differential performance across boarding strategies.