Check-in Counters Research Articles

빅데이터 분석을 활용한 공항 혼잡도 분석

This study is designed to help customers use more comfortable airports by predicting congestion and congestion times by identifying the traffic routes of passengers in the airport building by day of the week and time by using Wi-Fi sensor collectors, one of the IoT technologies. Analysis of passenger traffic analysis data showed that the most congested time zones were from noon. to 2p.m. for all facilities, which could be used to improve major facilities. Regression analysis of factors affecting congestion found that self-check-in reduces congestion and check-in counters increases congestion. These findings will provide important implications for operations, including congestion management at airports.

Optimizing Airport Land Side Operations: Check-In, Passengers’ Migration, and Security Control Processes

This paper deals with the optimization of the Check-in, passenger migration, and Security Control processes in an airport land side terminal. Given the layout of the terminal, the passengers’ flow, and the scheduled flights in a given time interval, the number and the position of Check-in counters and Security Control gates to be opened are output. The objective function is the minimization of the costs to activate the Check-in counters and the Security Control gates plus the costs that measure the passengers’ discomfort. The stochastic passengers’ behaviour and their preferences are simulated by a discrete event model, while the managing costs and the passengers’ discomfort are optimized by the Surrogate Method. Capodichino Airport, located in Naples (IT), has been considered for the test phase. Results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the solutions of the Surrogate Method compared with the performances of other algorithms.

Check-in Services and Passengers’ Impression of Airports in South-south Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria

The study examined check-in service quality attributes and passengers' impression of airports in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The research was motivated by the desire to know how well passengers' impression of Nigerian airport service quality have been shaped by four check-in service attributes (competence of staff, politeness of staff, waiting time at check-in counters and interactions with passengers). The study used stratified random sampling to survey four hundred passengers at Port Harcourt International Airport and Margaret Ekpo International Airport. Data were collected using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. The instrument was content-validated, while the Cronbach Alpha coefficient for the constructs gave reliability of 96.9 per cent. The data generated were analysed using mean rating and multiple linear regression analysis. The findings revealed that politeness of staff, waiting time at check-in counters and interactions with passengers significantly influenced passengers' impression of airports in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The study recommended that Airport management should regularly train frontline staff on customer service communication skills; provide feedback mechanisms such as voice recorders and CCTV cameras to check front-line interactions with passengers, and automate the check-in process as is obtainable in developed countries to reduce the waiting time at check-in counters. These will ensure and improve passengers’ perception and patronage of aviation services in the zone, locally and internationally.

Comparison of Queuing Performance Using Queuing Theory Model and Fuzzy Queuing Model at Check-in Counter in Airport

A queuing system is a process to measure the efficiency of a model by underlying the concepts of queue models: arrival and service time distributions, queue disciplines and queue behaviour. The main aim of this study is to compare the behaviour of a queuing system at check-in counters using the Queuing Theory Model and Fuzzy Queuing Model. The Queuing Theory Model gives performance measures of a single value while the Fuzzy Queuing Model has a range of values. The Dong, Shah and Wong (DSW) algorithm is used to define the membership function of performance measures in the Fuzzy Queuing Model. Based on the observation, the problem often occurs when customers are required to wait in the queue for a long time, thus indicating that the service systems are inefficient. Data including the variables were collected, such as arrival time in the queue (server) and service time. Results show that the performance measures of the Queuing Theory Model lie in the range of the computed performance measures of the Fuzzy Queuing Model. Hence, the results obtained from the Fuzzy Queuing Model are consistent to measure the queuing performance of an airline company in order to solve the problem in waiting line and will improve the quality of services provided by airline company.

Model-based heuristic for counter assignment problem with operational constrains: A case study

Check-in counters have a great impact on the quality of service for airports. It is airport management's responsibility to provide check-in counters to airlines. Each check-in group (i.e., flights sharing the same resources) has a counter demand and this gives rise to a counter assignment problem. This is due to a number of objectives and constraints under which check-in groups are allocated to check-in counters. In this paper, we develop an Integer Programming model to optimally assign incoming flights to check-in counters and propose a decomposition algorithm to solve the allocation problem in a reasonable time. Computational results from a medium sized airport indicate a better utilisation of check-in counters, enabling airport management to reduce/postpone investment in additional check-in counters.

Impact of Passenger-Arrival Patterns in Outbound Processes of Airports

This paper considers how the arrival pattern of passengers affects international terminal operations, including major outbound processes such as check-in, security screening, and immigration. The pattern of passenger arrivals is considered an important factor in planning airport-terminal facilities, such as the number of check-in counters and service agents, along with the operation times of passenger check-in and queue length. A Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) model was used to address this problem. It was built using ExtendSim V9.2 simulator software. The DES model can also be used to identify the system’s bottlenecks. Numerical testing shows that different arrival patterns have a significant impact on the performance of operational processes to determine the best policy for passenger arrival time.

A decision support system to improve performances of airport check-in services

The recent remarkable increase in air passenger traffic has been fostering a considerable congestion of the airport facilities. In this context, traditional procedures employed for check-in operations have been supported by alternative methods, based on the use of self-service options (kiosks, web services, app for mobile phones, etc). However, even if such innovations are contributing to improve the service level provided to passengers, field investigations suggest that traditional procedures will be employed also in the future, especially for medium and long-haul flights, where baggage dropping is required. For this reason, the passengers allocation problem at check-in counters is attracting growing attention by the scientific community and several decision support tools, involving both optimization and simulation methods, have been proposed. Most of the available approaches aim at deciding the optimal number of check-in counters to be activated, in such a way to balance the operative costs and passengers waiting times. Such approaches assume that the service capacity (in terms of available check-in operators and counters) is given and determined on the basis of physical constraints (related to the available space in the terminal) and of staff scheduling decisions made at a tactical level. The present contribution tries to overcome this limitation, by proposing a decision support system, based on a mathematical model, capable of designing optimal check-in policies by also incorporating staff scheduling decisions. The model is tested on some real-world case studies; computational results are evaluated, along with the practical usability of the approach.

Performance Efficiency Measurement of Airports

This article describes how to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the aviation sector and also to source extra funding, the Government of India has paved the way for private investors through to a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model since the 1980s. This liberalization step in the Indian aviation market has minimized the institutional barriers which have hindered the freedom and flexibility of air transport operations among private investors. Now, competition within the aviation sector has become fiercer; the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) in Indian airports are not only providing varied services, but also attracting consumers with new infrastructure and full modern facilities. The importance of this article is because after privatization, no studies have been conducted to examine the efficiency of Indian airports by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). An output-oriented DEA model is employed to determine the efficiency score of airports by taking a sample of 15 airports, including airports run by PPP, for comparison. Output-oriented DEA calculates the efficiency by maximizing the outputs for a given level of inputs. Therefore, this article contributes to the existing literature on Indian airports. Based on available data, three variables - length of runways, terminal size and number of check-in counters, are used as inputs and two variables - passenger movement and aircraft movement, are used as outputs.

Queuing analysis using Viswalk for check-in counter: Case study of Lombok Praya International Airport

Queuing analysis on check-in counter in airport is required to accommodate the passenger processing facilities, such as check-in service. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of a queuing system at check-in facilities in 2nd passenger terminal Lombok Praya International Airport in 2016 and 2036. This analysis is done by determining parameters of the queues at every check-in counter through simulations on Viswalk. Before running the simulation, the model of airport terminal must be created first. Queuing simulation starts with the traffic demand forecasting of domestic departure passenger for the next 20 years. To determine the optimal number of check-in counters, an iteration of various number is performed. Check-in services time data were adopted from previous study which became an input of the simulation using two different scenarios. The expected output are the queuing parameter and the distribution of passenger service time at each check-in counter.

Agent-based simulation with NetLogo to evaluate ambient intelligence scenarios

In this paper, an agent-based simulation is developed in order to evaluate an Ambient Intelligence scenario based on agents. Many AmI applications are implemented through agents but they are not compared with any other existing alternative in order to evaluate the relative benefits of using them. The proposed simulation environment analyses such benefits using two evaluation criteria: First, measuring agent satisfaction of different types of desires along the execution. Second, measuring time savings obtained through a correct use of context information. In this paper, an existing agent architecture, an ontology and a 12-steps protocol to provide AmI services in airports, is evaluated using the NetLogo simulation environment. In our NetLogo model, we are considering scalability issues of this application domain but using FIPA and BDI extensions to be coherent with our previous works and our previous JADE implementation of them. The NetLogo model simulates an airport with agent “passengers” passing through several zones located in a specific order in a map: passport controls, check-in counters of airline companies, boarding gates, and different types of shopping. Although the initial data in each simulation are generated randomly, and the model is just an approximation of real-world airports, the definition of this case of use of AmI through NetLogo agents opens an interesting way to evaluate the benefits of using AmI, which is a significant contribution to the final development of AmI systems.

Task assignment with start time-dependent processing times for personnel at check-in counters

This paper addresses a task assignment problem encountered by check-in counter personnel at airports. The problem consists of assigning multiskilled agents to a sequence of tasks in check-in counters. Because each task’s ending time is fixed to comply with the flight schedule, its processing time depends on the arrival of the assigned agents. We propose a mixed-integer program and a branch-and-price algorithm to solve this problem. We exploit the problem structure to efficiently formulate the pricing problems and improve computation time. Using real-world data from a German ground-handling agency, we conduct numerical studies to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions.

Modern Trends in Airport Self Check-in Kiosks

<p align="LEFT">Due to maintain the flow of the check-in process of air passengers, it is essential that services that ensure this process have been carried as quickly and effectively. One of the major current problems in this area is the efficiency of clearance of a large number of passengers over the check-in counters. By the gradual development of so-called self check-in services eventually delegate some activities in check-in process to passengers and the entire clearance process to speed up. In this article the authors deal with current state of the use of self check-in services in the world and predict the expected evolution of these services in the future. Subsequently, the authors present a new design of self-service kiosk and graphical user interface (GUI) of application such self-service check-in kiosk based on the analysis of the functions and features of similar solutions available on the market and with considering all currently known IATA requirements and the criteria relating to disabled passengers in order to lighten the load check-in counters and thereby accelerated the clearance of the passenger at the airport. The aim of the authors was to create a cost competitive solution offering such new features and services that do not offer other solutions, with an emphasis on improving the efficiency of the check-in process of passengers at the airport.</p>

Balancing the baggage handling performance of a check-in area shared by multiple airlines

Baggage handling systems (BHS) take up a significant portion of an airport's overall operation. In particular, an entryway BHS is an essential component as it facilitates a smooth transition for baggage flowing from the check-in area to the general BHS by reconstituting a dynamic baggage flow into a stable flow on a conveyor system. The main purpose of this research is to determine an appropriate workload balance for a BHS line being shared by multiple airlines. This is particularly relevant in the South Korean context, as imbalances have been observed in the BHS design for an extension at Gimhae International Airport. These imbalances lead to a lower customer satisfaction rates for that particular airline as well as a reduction in the level of service provided by the airport during peak hours. In this study, new window reservation control logic, a re-allocation algorithm using a merge configuration, is applied to the entryway BHS. This allows the system to efficiently control the baggage flow space from respective check-in counters so as to relieve conveyor bottleneck, an intrinsic problem leading to the imbalances. A simulation model is used to test the validity of the suggested algorithm, and to investigate the effects on the performance measures related to both the BHS and check-in area. The results indicate that this suggested algorithm reduces the imbalances for the airlines sharing the BHS collection conveyor, while maintaining overall BHS performance at an acceptable level. The relationships between the variable used in the algorithm and overall performance are discussed further.

Check-in counters queue analysis at Ataturk airport

Passenger check-in process is the beginning of the journey along to flight just after entering the airport. Qualification of the service given in check-in counters doesn’t differ from assignment type, but counter queue and other related parameters are affected by assignment type. During the check-in process that is generally provided by ground handling firms, parameters like average waiting time in queue, average time in the system, resource utilization are not taken into consideration. On the other hand airport administrations are becoming more aware of minimizing delays and using capacity effectively in the recent days. Considering entire parameters of the existing queue systems is providing us to determine delays and to increase efficiency on the way to optimizing entire system. In the study data is collected from the Ataturk Airport international departure check-in counters on peak hours. Check-in counter assignments are observed in two types as common use and flight based use. Collected data is used to develop a simulation model in Arena TM . Via developed simulation model, delays in the counter queues are examined and reasons are explained. Besides different scenarios are analyzed in order to increase system efficiency.

Design of service capacity for the ground crew at the airport check-in counters

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative approach for the problem of service capacity design for the ground crew at the airport check-in counters. Design/methodology/approach – Using data collected from the airport check-in counters, several characteristics of the service demand were studied. First, many service time-dependent operating characteristics are addressed over a specified time window to evaluate the problems from the current ground crew allocation. Second, a linear programming model is developed to determine the optimal number of check-in counters to open over the specified time window based on the case study. In addition, sensitive analysis is conducted to further explore the dependency effect of the factors as well as improve the model. Third, the shift adjustment of the ground crew allocation is provided so as to satisfy the given service demand. Findings – Numerical results indicated the effectiveness in the improvement of the human resource utilization of the proposed approach. The superiority of performance is illustrated in terms of less counters to be opened and decreased daily working hours. Originality/value – The study is novel by applying the integrated approach so as to design a proper service capacity and thus the service supply and demand can be balanced.

Common-use check-in counter reassignments with a variable number of service lines and variable length of time window

In the real world, there are a number of common factors that can cause perturbations at check-in counters, such as an airport closure, a temporary power failure, crashing of the counter computer, baggage conveyor belt malfunctions, and so on, forcing the airport authority to reassign flights to new check-in counters. In this study, we develop a model and a solution method to solve common-use check-in counter reassignment problems with a variable number of service lines and a variable length of time window. To test how well the proposed model and the solution method can be applied to the real world, we perform numerical tests based on a hypothetical incident in relation to a Taiwan airport’s operations. The test results show that the model and solution would be useful for the airport authority in actual operations.

Airport check-in counter assignment: a proposed solution

The recent global economic recession and adverse environmental impact have seriously shocked the airline industry. An important task for many airlines is to increase competitiveness. An extremely time-consuming check-in process, especially during peak hours, can significantly degrade passenger perceptions of service quality. Thus, improving the efficiency of check-in counters at airport passenger terminals is a major concern of airport operators and airlines. For example, improving the efficiency of counter assignments by airline reservation systems would reduce manpower needs and enhance operational efficiency. The objective of this study was to establish the operating pattern for airport check-in counter assignments by minimising the operational cost from incurred by the airline and maximising passenger service level with considering the use of kiosk machine and full/part-time duty counter staff. According to the experimental results and sensitivity analyses of actual airline operations data, employing part-time counter staff and using kiosk machines would significantly reduce counter operation cost and improve passenger service quality.

A network model for airport common use check-in counter assignments

The purpose of flight to check-in counter assignments is to assign each flight to specific check-in counters where the airline will provide passenger check-in services. The number of common use check-in counters required for daily operations is an important issue closely related to the airport's level of service and system performance. In this study, a new network model is developed for the optimization of common use check-in counter assignments. The goal is to minimize the number of counters required for daily operations. Numerical tests are performed on data for a major Taiwan airport. The obtained results show that the model performs well.

Efficiency Analysis and Target Setting of Spanish Airports

In this paper an efficiency analysis of 41 Spanish airports is carried out. A description of the physical infrastructure of the airports, namely total runway area, apron capacity, passenger throughput capacity, number of baggage belts, number of check-in counters and number of boarding gates, is used as inputs. Air Traffic Movements, Passenger Movements and Cargo handled are used as outputs. An output-oriented, Variable-Returns-to-Scale, non-radial Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model is used to compute the Russell measure of output technical efficiency. Half of the airports are found technically efficient. Scale efficiency and local Returns to Scale have also been assessed, indicating that except for a few airports that operate at their Most Productive Scale Size, for most Spanish airports Increasing Returns to Scale prevail. An original DEA model for target setting and scenario analysis is also proposed. The model uses two parameters (Plane Load Factor and Passenger/Cargo Ratio) that allow the relating of two of the outputs to the third. The model computes efficient targets given the value of these two parameters and the vector of available inputs. The results of this target-setting DEA model for Seville airport for different values of the two parameters and different future input scenarios are presented.

Dynamic Allocation of Airline Check-In Counters: A Queueing Optimization Approach

This paper was motivated by an observation in an international airport with regard to allocation of resources for check-in counters. In an exclusive check-in counter system, each flight has a dedicated number of counters that will be open until at least a half-hour before the scheduled departure of that flight. Currently, in many of the airports around the world, the decision to open or close check-in counters is done on an ad hoc basis by human schedulers. In doing so, the schedulers are almost always forced to perform a balancing act in meeting the quality of service stipulated by the airport authority vis-à-vis the optimal allocation of the resources to the counters. There appear to be very few academic and application papers in counter management, and most of those that have looked into this problem have resorted to simulation to study the queue characteristics. Ours is the first paper to show that for a specific flight, this complicated problem is amenable to analytical treatment. We first propose a multicounter queueing model with a special type of arrival process reflecting reality from the population of passengers booked for the flight. Most importantly, we derive the time-dependent operating characteristics to the queueing process under a specified time-window constraint. Then a stochastic dynamic programming model is formulated to determine the optimal numbers of counters to open over the time window specified. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the model solution and gain managerial insights.