Optimal escort dispatch for airport travelers with reduced mobility

Abstract

An important component of airport landside operations involves providing assistance to passengers with reduced mobility. These operations are typically managed by third-party contractors, which leverage a team of escorts and a set of wheelchairs to provide mobility assistance services. The performance of these systems relies critically on the dispatch of escorts and wheelchairs to serve each traveler request. Sub-optimal dispatch can lead to negative individual and system-wide implications, such as long passenger wait times, customer dissatisfaction or added delays in flight departures. This paper reports the outcomes of a collaboration with the Pittsburgh International Airport that involved three steps. First, the collection and digitization of data provided visibility into demand for mobility assistance services and historical performance of the system. Second, we propose an original integer programming model to optimize and support the assignment of escorts to traveler requests, and we develop an efficient solution approach based on a rolling algorithm to enable the implementation of the model with realistic problem sizes. We verify that the model’s outputs are consistent with insights obtained from the historical records of operations, and identify opportunities to enhance the level of service without increasing system capacity. In particular, the results suggest that improvements in information flows and in communication between airlines, the central dispatcher and passenger escorts can result in significant dispatch improvements. Third, we leveraged these insights by developing a tablet application to provide real-time visibility into traveler requests, dispatch recommendations, and data visualizations for continued performance assessment and enhancement.