Aircraft Boarding Research Articles

Connection strength analysis for composite fuselage gate structures of civil aircraft

Civil aircraft boarding gate is an important channel for passengers to enter and exit the aircraft, and is also an important part of the aircraft structure, with the function of maintaining cockpit pressure. Traditional boarding doors are made of metal, and with the large number of composite materials used in the bearing structure of civil aircraft, composite boarding doors are also used in new civil aircraft. The strength of the connection inside the new composite boarding gate is related to the safety of passengers and crew. This paper focuses on the connection problem of the internal structure of composite boarding gate, aiming to analyze its connection strength under working conditions. This paper establishes a real finite element model of the boarding gate according to the loading condition and force transmission characteristics of the civil aircraft door and analyzes the connection strength of the structure such as the skin and the transverse and longitudinal beams, the skin and the side frame, the transverse and longitudinal beams connection, and the stop block in turn. The study shows that the strength of the connecting structures of the boarding gate designed by using composite materials is reasonable and can meet the service requirements of the boarding gate, thus demonstrating the rationality of the boarding gate structure designed with composite materials.

Evaluating Classical Airplane Boarding Methods Focusing on Higher-Risk Passengers during Post-Pandemics

As the global civil aviation industry recovers and the restrictions imposed because of COVID-19 on the process of aircraft boarding gradually diminish, the issue of how to reduce health risks in special populations who are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 during Post-pandemics has become urgent. In this paper, we propose a health metric for the health risks of boarding groups based on the seat risk metrics used during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the comparison of health risks among boarding groups. Secondly, based on the agent-based model using NetLogo, we evaluate the health risk of boarding groups from the boarding methods currently used in airline practice, using the health and efficiency metrics used during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it was confirmed that health risk was associated with the boarding group sequences. As a result, specific boarding groups for high-risk groups are proposed when using the classical boarding methods for passengers at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. Our results show that considering the placement of high-risk groups in the reverse pyramid fourth boarding group will contribute to a faster boarding for all methods (20.5% reduction in time) and a lower risk of transmission within this group (73.6% reduction) compared with the standard random boarding procedure.

A Simulation Study of Aircraft Boarding Strategies

To ensure the safety of passengers concerning virus propagation, such as COVID-19, and keep the turnaround time at low levels, airlines should seek efficient aircraft boarding strategies in terms of both physical distancing and boarding times. This study seeks to analyze the impact of different boarding strategies in the context of the International Air Transport Association’s recommendations during the pandemic to reduce interference and physical contact between passengers in airplanes. Boarding strategies such as back-to-front, outside-in, reverse pyramid, blocks, Steffen, and modified optimal have been tested in this context. This study extends the previous literature using discrete event simulation to evaluate the impact of the occupation of the middle seat by family members only. This study also analyses the impact of having passengers carrying hand luggage and priority passengers on the performance of these strategies concerning boarding times. In general, the simulation results revealed a 15% improvement in boarding times when the reverse pyramid strategy is used compared to a random strategy, which essentially results from a reduction in the boarding interferences between passengers. The results also show that Steffen’s strategy is the best performing, while the blocks strategy results in the worst performance. This study has practical implications for airline companies concerning both operation efficiency and passenger safety.

High-precision angle adaptive control simulation of synchronous motor for automatic lifting and boarding equipment of aircraft platform

In order to improve the accuracy and adaptability of the Angle control of the aircraft platform automatic lifting and boarding synchronous motors, the high precision Angle adaptive control method of the aircraft platform automatic lifting and boarding synchronous motors is studied. The structure and function of lifting mechanism in automatic lifting and boarding device of aircraft platform are analyzed. The mathematical equation of synchronous motor in automatic lifting and boarding device is established in a coordinate system, the ideal transmission ratio of synchronous motor angle is calculated, and the PID control law is designed according to the transmission ratio. Finally, the high precision Angle adaptive control of the synchronous motor of the aircraft platform automatic lifting and boarding device is realized by using the control rate. The simulation results show that the proposed method can quickly and accurately realize the angular position control of the research object, and the control error is within ± 0.15rd, which has high adaptability.

Integrated Analysis System for Dynamic Sealing Performance of Civil Aircraft Boarding Door

This paper introduces an integrated analysis system for the dynamic sealing performance of civil aircraft boarding doors. The analysis system mainly carries out virtual verification for the sealing performance of civil aircraft doors in various service environments, including the simulation module of fluid pressure temperature on the surface of aircraft doors. There are three subsystems: hatch fluid-structure coupling interpolation module and hatch dynamic sealing performance finite element simulation module. The system is used to simulate the sealing performance of civil aircraft boarding doors in complex dynamic environments such as under high and low temperatures and high and low pressures. The system can improve the evaluation mechanism of aircraft hatch dynamic sealing performance, and help to build a virtual simulation analysis and test verification system of hatch performance under the interaction of multiple environmental factors, so as to help overcome the bottleneck in the development of civil aircraft in China.

A combined optimization–simulation approach for modified outside-in boarding under COVID-19 regulations including limited baggage compartment capacities

The timely handling of passengers is critical to efficient airport and airline operations. The pandemic requirements mandate adapted process designs and handling procedures to maintain and improve operational performance. Passenger activities in the confined aircraft cabin must be evaluated for potential virus transmission, and boarding procedures should be designed to minimize the negative impact on passengers and operations. In our approach, we generate an optimized seat allocation that considers passengers’ physical activities when they store their hand luggage items in the overhead compartment. We proposed a mixed-integer programming formulation including the concept of shedding rates to determine and minimize the risk of virus transmission by solving the NP-hard seat assignment problem. We are improving the already efficient outside-in boarding, where passengers in the window seat board first and passengers in the aisle seat board last, taking into account COVID-19 regulations and the limited capacity of overhead compartments. To demonstrate and evaluate the improvements achieved in aircraft boarding, a stochastic agent-based model is used in which three operational scenarios with seat occupancy of 50%, 66%, and 80% are implemented. With our optimization approach, the average boarding time and the transmission risk are significantly reduced already for the general case, i.e., when no specific boarding order is specified (random boarding). If the already efficient outside-in boarding is used as a reference, the boarding time can be reduced by more than 30% by applying our approach, while keeping the transmission risk at the lowest level.

New boarding strategies for a novel aircraft cabin installed with side-slip seats

The traditional method of relieving boarding congestion is to reduce aisle and seat conflicts by optimizing the boarding strategy. Here, we focus on another way of smoothing the passenger flow for a novel cabin installed with side-slip seats. Three aspects are discussed in this work. First, we explore the characteristics of fast boarding sequences that benefit most from side-slip seats using a simulated annealing algorithm. Second, we introduce three alternative strategies and evaluate their efficiencies using a realistic aircraft boarding model. The result shows that the boarding time could be largely reduced by adopting the new strategies. Sensitivity analyses also imply that side-slip seats are tolerable to the number of inexperienced passengers who are unfamiliar with the side-slip seats. Besides, the infection risk is also discussed as a function of ticket validation time at the check desk. Third, a boarding assistant system is designed to implement the proposed strategies.

Reducing the effect of passengers’ non-compliance with aircraft boarding rules

The quest for efficient aircraft boarding strategies continues to generate lots of business and scientific discussions. Boarding strategies define rules and procedures aimed to reduce boarding time and operational cost. Most of the proposed strategies do not account for passengers’ non-compliance with boarding rules. Non-compliance is one of the major non-deterministic problems that can degrade any performance improvement to be expected from adopting a boarding strategy. To that, it is of paramount interest to shed light on this problem and introduce approaches for mitigating any related performance degradation in the boarding process. Although some recent research investigations considered the effect of non-compliance on the overall boarding time under different strategies, there was a lack of remedial actions. This paper dissects the operational characteristics of the non-compliance activity, proposes two different intervention approaches to deal with non-complying passengers, and analyzes the resulting impact under different categories of boarding strategies using a cellular-automaton-based simulation.

The Impact of Aircraft Cabin Environment on Passenger Boarding Efficiency and Robustness

The foldable and the side-slip seats are designed to facilitate the aircraft boarding process by providing wider spaces. Yet, these futuristic concepts have not been investigated exhaustively concerning boarding time performance and the sensitivity of various factors. Thus, we test the effectiveness of such two new concept seats by using a cellular automaton (CA) based aircraft boarding model. Simulation results confirm the potentials of improving efficiency by using the two innovative seats, and of which the foldable seat prevails over the side-slip seat in boarding time. About 12.7% and 30% time reduction could be achieved for the side-slip seat and the foldable seat by taking the conventional seat performance as a baseline, and this value could be further increased by using some other refined boarding strategies. Moreover, the foldable seat exhibits much robustness to the variation of the boarding conditions than the side-slip seat and thus could provide a much reliable boarding environment.

Analytical approach to solve the problem of aircraft passenger boarding during the coronavirus pandemic

The corona pandemic significantly changes the processes of aircraft and passenger handling at the airport. In our contribution, we focus on the time-critical process of aircraft boarding, where regulations regarding physical distances between passengers will significantly increase boarding time. The passenger behavior is implemented in a field-validated stochastic cellular automata model, which is extended by a module to evaluate the transmission risk. We propose an improved boarding process by considering that most of the passengers are travel together and should be boarded and seated as a group. The NP-hard seat allocation of groups with minimized individual interactions between groups is solved with a genetic algorithm. Then, the improved seat allocation is used to derive an associated boarding sequence aiming at both short boarding times and low risk of virus transmission. Our results show that the consideration of groups will significantly contribute to a faster boarding (reduction of time by about 60%) and less transmission risk (reduced by 85%) compared to the standard random boarding procedures applied in the pandemic scenario.

Advanced Passenger Movement Model Depending On the Aircraft Cabin Geometry

The aircraft cabin and boarding procedures are steadily increasing focus points for both aircraft manufacturers and airlines, as they play a key part in the customer experience. In the German research project AVACON (AdVAnced Aircraft CONcepts), the boarding procedure is assessed using the PAXelerate boarding simulation. As the project demands an increased level of detail concerning the passenger movement model, this publication introduces an improved methodology. Additions to the model include the development of a method capable of describing the passenger walking speed in dependence of the surrounding objects, their proximity as well as the location of other passengers within the cabin. The validation of the model is performed using the AVACON research baseline and an Airbus A320. The model is then applied to an altered version of the Airbus A320 with an extended aisle and to a COVID-19 safe distance scenario. Regarding the results, an extended aisle width delivers boarding times reduced by up to 3%, whereas the COVID-19 assessment delivers a 67% increase in boarding times. Concluding, the integration of the newly developed model empowers PAXelerate to simulate a more detailed boarding process and enables a better understanding of the influence of cabin layout changes to an aircraft’s boarding performance.

Evaluation of Technology-Supported Distance Measuring to Ensure Safe Aircraft Boarding during COVID-19 Pandemic

With the rise of COVID-19, the sustainability of air transport is a major challenge, as there is limited space in aircraft cabins, resulting in a higher risk of virus transmission. In order to detect possible chains of infection, technology-supported apps are used for social distancing. These COVID-19 applications are based on the display of the received signal strength for distance estimation, which is strongly influenced by the spreading environment due to the signal multipath reception. Therefore, we evaluate the applicability of technology-based social distancing methods in an aircraft cabin environment using a radio propagation simulation based on a three-dimensional aircraft model. We demonstrate the susceptibility to errors of the conventional COVID-19 distance estimation, which can lead to large errors in the determination of distances and to the impracticability of traditional tracing approaches during passenger boarding/deboarding. In the context of the future connected cabin, a robust distance measurement must be implemented to ensure safe travel. Finally, our results can be transferred to similar fields of application, e.g., trains or public transport.

Evaluation of Aircraft Boarding Scenarios Considering Reduced Transmissions Risks

Air travel appears as particularly hazardous in a pandemic situation, since infected people can travel worldwide and could cause new breakouts in remote locations. The confined space conditions in the aircraft cabin necessitate a small physical distance between passengers and hence may boost virus transmissions. In our contribution, we implemented a transmission model in a virtual aircraft environment to evaluate the individual interactions between passengers during aircraft boarding and deboarding. Since no data for the transmission is currently available, we reasonably calibrated our model using a sample case from 2003. The simulation results show that standard boarding procedures create a substantial number of possible transmissions if a contagious passenger is present. The introduction of physical distances between passengers decreases the number of possible transmissions by approx. 75% for random boarding sequences, and could further decreased by more strict reduction of hand luggage items (less time for storage, compartment space is always available). If a second door is used for boarding and deboarding, the standard boarding times could be reached. Individual boarding strategies (by seat) could reduce the transmission potential to a minimum, but demand for complex pre-sorting of passengers. Our results also exhibit that deboarding consists of the highest transmission potential and only minor benefits from distance rules and hand luggage regulations.

The Fault Analysis and Solution of the Hydraulic Control System of a Certain Aircraft Boarding Gate

The Fault Analysis and Solution of the Hydraulic Control System of a Certain Aircraft Boarding Gate

Machine learning approach to predict aircraft boarding

Reliable and predictable ground operations are essential for punctual air traffic movements. Uncertainties in the airborne phase have significantly less impact on flight punctuality than deviations in aircraft ground operations. The ground trajectory of an aircraft primarily consists of the handling processes at the stand, defined as the aircraft turnaround, which are mainly controlled by operational experts. Only the aircraft boarding, which is on the critical path of the turnaround, is driven by the passengers’ experience and willingness or ability to follow the proposed procedures. We used a recurrent neural network approach to predict the progress of a running boarding event. In particular, we implemented and trained the Long Short-Term Memory model. Since no operational data of the specific passenger behavior is available, we used a reliable, validated boarding simulation environment to provide data about the aircraft boarding events. First predictions show that uni-variate input (seat load progress) produces insufficient results, so we consider expected passenger interactions in the aircraft cabin as well. These interactions are aggregated to a prior-developed complexity metric and allow an efficient evaluation of the current boarding progress. With this multi-variate input, our Long Short-Term Memory model achieves appropriate prediction results for the boarding progress.

Consideration of Passenger Interactions for the Prediction of Aircraft Boarding Time

In this paper we address the prediction of aircraft boarding using a machine learning approach. Reliable process predictions of aircraft turnaround are an important element to further increase the punctuality of airline operations. In this context, aircraft turnaround is mainly controlled by operational experts, but the critical aircraft boarding is driven by the passengers’ experience and willingness or ability to follow the proposed procedures. Thus, we used a developed complexity metric to evaluate the actual boarding progress and a machine learning approach to predict the final boarding time during running operations. A validated passenger boarding model is used to provide reliable aircraft status data, since no operational data are available today. These data are aggregated to a time-based complexity value and used as input for our recurrent neural network approach for predicting the boarding progress. In particular we use a Long Short-Term Memory model to learn the dynamical passenger behavior over time with regards to the given complexity metric.

An aircraft boarding model with the group behavior and the quantity of luggage

A reasonable boarding model can effectively improve the boarding efficiency. Therefore, developing boarding models/strategies to improve the boarding efficiency has been an interesting topic in the air transportation. In this paper, we incorporate the group behavior and the quantity of luggage into the boarding process, and then develop an extended boarding model to investigate the effects of the two factors on the delay time and boarding time. The numerical results show that the quantity of luggage may make each passenger’s boarding behavior more complex, while the group behavior can shorten some passengers’ delay time and the total boarding time. The results can help administrators organize the boarding process and enhance the boarding efficiency.

An aircraft boarding model accounting for group behavior

The rapid increase of civil aviation has posed a great challenge to air traffic (especially aircraft boarding). In this study, we propose a new aircraft boarding model to explore the impacts of group behavior on each passenger's motion, seat conflict, check-in time, time of handling luggage as well as boarding time during the boarding process. The numerical results show that the group behavior has some positive impacts on the boarding efficiency, and that the impacts become more prominent with an increasing number of groups. Hence, the group behavior should be encouraged to enhance the efficiency during the boarding process.

Implementation and application of a stochastic aircraft boarding model

The aircraft turnaround processes is mainly controlled by the ground handling, airport or airline staff, except the aircraft boarding, which is driven by the passengers’ experience and willingness or ability to follow the proposed boarding procedures. The paper uses a prior developed, calibrated, stochastic aircraft boarding model, which is applied to different boarding strategies (chronological order of passenger arrival, hand luggage handling), group constellations and innovative infrastructural changes (Flying Carpet, Side-Slip Seat, Foldable Passenger Seat). In this context, passenger boarding is assumed to be a stochastic, agent-based, forward-directed, one-dimensional and discrete process. The stochastic model covers individual passenger behavior as well as operational constraints and deviations. A comprehensive assessment using one model allows for efficient comparison of current research approaches and innovative operational solutions for efficient passenger boarding.

Field Trial Measurements to Validate a Stochastic Aircraft Boarding Model

Efficient boarding procedures have to consider both operational constraints and the individual passenger behavior. In contrast to the aircraft handling processes of fueling, catering and cleaning, the boarding process is more driven by passengers than by airport or airline operators. This paper delivers a comprehensive set of operational data including classification of boarding times, passenger arrival times, times to store hand luggage, and passenger interactions in the aircraft cabin as a reliable basis for calibrating models for aircraft boarding. In this paper, a microscopic approach is used to model the passenger behavior, where the passenger movement is defined as a one-dimensional, stochastic, and time/space discrete transition process. This model is used to compare measurements from field trials of boarding procedures with simulation results and demonstrates a deviation smaller than 5%.