Is the boarding process on the critical path of the airplane turn-around?

Abstract

One of the effects of increasing cost pressure in airline industry is that airlines strive to realize short turn-around times, i.e., to let the airplanes stay at the gates between flights only as long as necessary. Associated with this is the reduction of the airplane boarding time, which accounts for a large part of the turn-around time. Most of the scientific literature in this area assumes that the boarding process is on the critical path of the turn-around, at least in sufficiently many cases, and hence has a crucial influence on the delay of a flight. The aim of this study is to analyze this assumption empirically. In a field study, we manually collected data of short- and medium-haul flights at a large European airport and analyzed them by performing statistical hypothesis testing. Our results indicate that boarding is on the critical path of the airplane turn-around. Hence, when aiming to reduce the cost of a flight by minimizing delays, optimizing the boarding time and the processes that are related to the boarding procedure is reasonable and thus recommended to the airlines.