Airplane Boarding, Disk Scheduling and Space-Time Geometry

Abstract

We show how the process of passengers boarding an airplane and the process of optimal I/O scheduling to a disk drive with a linear seek function can be asymptotically modeled by 2-dimensional space-time geometry. We relate the space-time geometry of the models to important quantities such as total boarding time and total service time. We show that the efficiency of a boarding policy depends crucially on a parameter k which depends on the interior design of the airplane. Policies which are good for small values of k are bad for large values of k and vice versa.