A new linear programming approach and genetic algorithm for solving airline boarding problem

The airline industry is under intense competition to simultaneously increase efficiency and satisfaction for passengers and profitability and internal system benefit for itself. The boarding process is one way to achieve these objectives as it tends itself to adaptive changes. In order to increase the flying time of a plane, commercial airlines try to minimize the boarding time, which is one of the most lengthy parts of a plane's turn time. To reduce boarding time, it is thus necessary to minimize the number of interferences between passengers by controlling the order in which they get onto the plane through a boarding policy. Here, we determine the passenger boarding problem and examine the different kinds of passenger boarding strategies and boarding interferences in a single aisle aircraft. We offer a new integer linear programming approach to reduce the passenger boarding time. A genetic algorithm is used to solve this problem. Numerical results show effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.