Fourteenth USA/Europe Air Traffic Management Research and Development Seminar (ATM2021)
Abstract
Boarding and disembarking an aircraft is a time-critical
airport ground handling process. Operations in the
confined aircraft cabin must also reduce the potential risk
of virus transmission to passengers under current COVID-
19 boundary conditions. Passenger boarding will generally
be regulated by establishing passenger sequences to reduce
the influence of negative interactions between passengers (e.g., congestion in the aisle). This regulation cannot be implemented to the same extent when disembarking at the end of a flight. In our approach, we generate an optimized seat allocation that takes into account both the distance constraints of COVID-19 regulations and groups of passengers travelling together (e.g., families or couples). This seat allocation minimizes the potential transmission risk, while at the same time we calculate improved entry sequences for passenger groups (fast boarding).
We show in our simulation environment that boarding and
disembarkation times can be significantly reduced even if a
physical distance between passenger groups is required. To
implement our proposed sequences during real disembarkation,
we propose an active information system that incorporates the
aircraft cabin lighting system. Thus, the lights above each group member could be turned on when that passenger group is
requested to disembark