bonjour, administration d'aviation et services
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Analysis of Airplane Boarding Times
Analysis of Airplane Boarding Times
Abstract
We model and analyze the process of passengers boarding an airplane. We show how
the model yields closed-form estimates for the expected boarding time in many cases of
interest. The computations reveal a clear link between the e ciency of various airline
boarding policies and interior airplane design parameters, such as distance between rows.
Comparison of our results with previous work, based on discrete event simulations, shows
a high degree of agreement. Our work thus provides an explanation and theoretical
foundation for these previous results, while allowing greater
exibility in terms of exploring
many parameter settings.
http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~ebachmat/managesubmit.pdf
Most Annoying Airline Delays Might Just Be in the Boarding
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: October 31, 2011
It’s the common tale of woe for many travelers waiting to board a plane. First the airline has to go through a long list of passengers who have priority: First- and business-class passengers, frequent fliers, elite card holders, uniformed members of the military, families with children, those who hold credit cards affiliated with the airlines, passengers who paid for priority seats.
By the time coach travelers are called, the overhead bins seem to be already full.
Airlines have been boarding passengers since the first commercial flight, but as they have added new classes of seating to their cabins and new fees for priority boarding — all in the name of more revenue — they have slowed down the whole process.
Checked-baggage fees have only added to the problem, because travelers now take more roll-ons onboard, blocking the aisles as they try to cram their belongings into any available space.
And that’s not to mention the fact that planes are now fuller.
That is why some airlines have gone back to the drawing board to rein in a lengthening process. As it is, boarding time has doubled over the last decades, according to research by Boeing. It now takes 30 to 40 minutes to board about 140 passengers on a domestic flight, up from around 15 minutes in the 1970s.
“They should have a different line for people with carry-ons like they do at baseball games with bags,” said Brian Proffit, who was flying to Houston from New York with Delta Air Lines. “The boarding process has become worse than the security lanes.”
One airline did figure out a way to sharply cut boarding time. Spirit Airlines found that passengers got to their seats much more rapidly once it started charging $20 to $40 per carry-on bag. Since it’s $2 cheaper to check a bag, more passengers do, and Spirit claims its “stress-free boarding” saves six minutes on average.
Others are reluctant to take such a drastic step for fear of alienating customers.
It should be no surprise that boarding has become one more frustrating step in airline travel. Or, as Mark E. DuPont, the vice president for airport services planning at American Airlines, put it: “Boarding can be like driving behind a slow-moving truck that you can’t overtake.”
Airlines have tried all kinds of elaborate tricks over the years to leave the gate on time. Some board passengers in the back rows first, while others give priority to those with window seats, and some come up with elaborate combinations, including one no longer used, known as the “reverse pyramid.”
But passengers can be unpredictable.
“The real world has wrecked their optimization plans,” said Matthew Daimler, the founder of SeatGuru, a Web site that helps passengers find the best seats on a particular plane.
American Airlines changed the way it boarded its planes in May. It still gives priority to business passengers and frequent fliers but then boards passengers who paid an extra $9 to $19 to get on early, guaranteeing they will find space to stow their bags.
The rest of the passengers are then brought in as three groups, sorted in an attempt to spread them out more evenly through the cabin and allow more people to find their seats faster. The approach also helps passengers stow their luggage more efficiently, nearer to their seats, allowing more people to find overhead space and cutting the number of bags that need to be checked at the last minute — a common cause of delayed flights.
The new method has cut boarding by four to five minutes, Mr. DuPont said.
All the extra fees have been a major benefit to the airlines’ bottom lines. According to estimates by Amadeus, a global distribution service, they will add up to $12.5 billion in 2011 for major United States airlines, up 87 percent from last year.
The challenge of boarding is thornier for narrow-body planes with single aisles that are used on domestic flights than on the larger planes on international flights where passengers have two possible pathways.
A scientist once said the problem of boarding a single-aisle plane was a real-life application of Einstein’s theory of relativity, where passengers are constrained in their movements through space and time.
A few years ago, Jason H. Steffen, an astrophysicist at Fermilab in Chicago, figured there had to be a better way to board after he was held up on the jetway while waiting for a flight to Washington. “If the process was efficient, there would be no line,” he said.
He set out to solve the problem using a “Markov chain Monte Carlo optimization algorithm” — a mathematical program well suited to the kind of haphazard events that occur in an airplane cabin. Much to his surprise, he found that the common back-to-front method was among the slowest: passengers must wait for those ahead of them to stow their bags and sit down. It is far better, it turns out, to let passengers board randomly. Mr. Steffen claims he found the fastest way, which involves boarding passengers from the back who are seated two rows apart.
“The lesson I learned comes down to this: you want to spread passengers out and not concentrate them while boarding,” he said. But the method is unlikely to be picked up because the airlines say it is too complicated.
Others have also searched for the holy grail of boarding. In 2002, America West Airlines, which later merged with US Airways, hired industrial engineers from Arizona State University to speed up the boarding process. The group came up with an approach that they called the “reverse pyramid.” It begins with passengers assigned to window seats in the back, and gradually makes its way to the front of the plane in a staggered pattern.
That saved time, but US Airways dropped it in 2007 because some passengers without elite status sitting in the front could not find space for their bags.
“Overhead space has really become a premium product,” said Kerry Hester, the senior vice president for operations planning at US Airways.
Another approach is used by Southwest, which says it can board its planes in around 15 minutes. It says the root of the delays is the practice of assigning seat numbers. Southwest’s passengers are instead assigned to one of three boarding groups, and then given a number based on the time they checked in.
Passengers who buy a premium “Business Select” ticket are guaranteed to board ahead of everyone, followed by Southwest frequent fliers and passengers who bought a $10 one-way “early-bird check-in” pass.
The airlines, meanwhile, keeps looking for what Scott O’Leary, managing director of customer experience at United, described as “the sweet spot between speed and a sense of order.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 1, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Most Annoying Airline Delays Might Just Be in the Boarding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/business/airlines-are-trying-to-cut-boarding-times-on-planes.html?pagewanted=all
Comparing Airplane Boarding Methods
Group/Zone Boarding
Boarding Systems
See http://menkes76.com/projects/boarding/boarding.htm for videos of animations
Monday, May 21, 2012
AirAsia to start Singapore hub soon, widening its network
By Jahabar Sadiq
Editor
Editor
May 08, 2012
KUALA LUMPUR, May 8 — AirAsia has received Singapore’s approval to
start a hub in the island republic soon, say sources, allowing the
Malaysian airline to expand its network in the growing regional low-cost
market segment just a week after Putrajaya aborted its share swap with
loss-making Malaysia Airlines (MAS).
The Malaysian Insider understands that Singapore has
informed AirAsia it will get an air operator’s certificate (AOC) as soon
as possible, ending years of lobbying by Asia’s biggest low-cost
carrier to set up operations in the city-state, a leading Asian
financial centre.“Singapore has agreed in principle to issue the AOC. It will be issued soon,” an industry source told The Malaysian Insider.
AirAsia chief executive Tan Sri Tony Fernandes was quoted last February as saying he aims to get clearance this year from the Singapore aviation authorities to fly to more destinations from Singapore.
Fernandes told Channel NewsAsia he proposed to make the country a regional hub for his low-cost airline, alongside Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan, naming India and China as key countries to which AirAsia is seeking approval to fly to.
AirAsia will focus on creating an ASEAN brand with an operational hub in all Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries within the next five years, he said. It currently has local joint-venture units in Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand, apart from long-distance low-cost carrier AirAsia X.
The budget carrier began flying two flights a day into the city-state from Kuala Lumpur in 2007, seven years after it began operations as a low-cost airline. It now flies 12 times a day from Kuala Lumpur apart from other direct flights to cities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
“This is a good boost for AirAsia as the current economic climate means more people will fly low-cost airlines for leisure and even business from Changi, which is an international hub,” another source said, adding AirAsia can compete with Singapore Airlines’ budget carrier unit Scoot.
The Singapore budget airline’s first route will be a daily Singapore-Sydney service from June using a Boeing 777-200, said company officials, with a Singapore-Gold Coast route to follow. The airline said future international destinations will include China.
AirAsia’s biggest market remains Malaysia but it has seen growth in Indonesia and Thailand, which have large domestic operations. It has just started its operations in Japan and the Philippines and is said to be eyeing Myanmar, which has opened up its economy in the past year.
Fernandes, who took over AirAsia for RM1 and debts in 2001 when it was a two-plane operation, has turned it into Asia’s biggest low-cost carrier within a decade. His success prompted Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad to finally agree to work with him to turn around MAS, which lost RM2.52 billion last year.
But the share swap signed last August faced fierce opposition from some politicians and the flag carrier’s unions, who represent the majority of the 20,000 airline staff, pushing the government to abort the deal on May 2.
The unwinding of the share swap saw Khazanah transfer its 10 per cent or 277,650,600 ordinary shares in AirAsia back to Fernandes’ Tune Air Sdn Bhd, while Tune Air transferred its 20.5 per cent or 685,142,000 ordinary shares in MAS back to Khazanah. It was a cashless transaction and based on the same swap ratio of 2.05 based on the prices when the share swap was announced in August 2011, where MAS was valued at RM1.60 per share and AirAsia’s share at RM3.95.
OSK Research had pointed out that AirAsia was to benefit more with the unbundling of the deal, saying “as Malaysia is predominantly a low-cost passenger market with a penetration rate of over 57 per cent, this gives AirAsia the upper advantage given its low-cost structure and vast route network, hence limiting the pressure from MAS in view of its ailing financial condition.”
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/airasia-to-start-singapore-hub-soon-widening-its-network/http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/airasia-to-start-singapore-hub-soon-widening-its-network/
Turbulent skies ahead for Singapore Airlines?
Near-term earnings will be shaky due to plummeting yields and anemic demand for European long-haul flights.
While Singapore Airlines has been cutting down its staff bonus and jet fuel costs, it still won't be enough to make up for tepid passenger and cargo market demand. The revenue contributions from Scoot won't kick in until after FY13, which certainly doesn't help the near-term prospects for the airliner.
Here's more from CIMB:
Continued pressure on yields due to promotional activities, and an
increasingly weak outlook for European economies suggest that SIA could
struggle for a while yet with long-haul travel demand. We think that
LCCs remain in a better position to weather the downcycle.
We downgrade our relative call from Neutral to Underperform on
better expected returns for FSSTI. We raise our forecasts by around 30%
for FY12-13 on better yields as we were too bearish a few quarters ago.
SIA will be announcing FY12 results on Wednesday evening, followed
by an analysts’ briefing on Thursday morning. We expect a 4Q core net
profit of around S$120m, and a full-year core net profit of around
S$400m. Our previous forecasts were too low, and we are raising them in
anticipation of the results.
SIA’s 4Q (January-March 2012) ASK capacity grew by 4%, while its
RPK demand rose 7% yoy, with its passenger load factor improving 2.1%
pts to 77.6%. This was due to an easy comparison base that was affected
by Japan’s earthquake. Meanwhile, 4Q’s cargo AFTK capacity dipped 2% but
RFTK demand fell an even faster 3% yoy, leading to a 0.7%-pt decline in
the cargo load factor to 61.9%. Yields for both the passenger and cargo
segments should decline yoy due to
the current weak environment.
the current weak environment.
However, the impact on profits is partially mitigated by lower
staff bonuses than last year, while jet fuel prices also weakened from
US$135 in 3Q to US$127/barrel in 2Q.
We do not expect the results to catalyse its share price, as its
near-term outlook remains hazy. We also do not expect Scoot to be a
material earnings contributor in FY13, since it is a longer-term
project.
http://sbr.com.sg/aviation/in-focus/turbulent-skies-ahead-singapore-airlines
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)