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Mostafa Salari
Department of Civil Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada

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Journal article
Published: 11 September 2020 in Journal of Air Transport Management
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This paper addresses the airplane passengers’ seat assignment problem while practicing social distancing among passengers. We proposed a mixed integer programming model to assign passengers to seats on an airplane in a manner that will respect two types of social distancing. One type of social distancing refers to passengers being seated far enough away from each other. The metric for this type of social distancing is how many passengers are seated so close to each other as to increase the risk of infection. The other type of social distancing refers to the distance between seat assignments and the aisle. That distance influences the health risk involved in passengers and crew members walking down the aisle. Corresponding metrics for both health risks are included in the objective function. To conduct simulation experiments, we define different scenarios distinguishing between the relative level of significance of each type of social distancing. The results suggest the seating assignments that best serve the intention of the scenarios. We also reformulate the initial model to determine seat assignments that maximize the number of passengers boarding an airplane while practicing social distancing among passengers. In the last part of this study, we compare the proposed scenarios with the recommended middle-seat blocking policy presently used by some airlines to keep social distancing among passengers. The results show that the proposed scenarios can provide social distancing among seated passengers similar to the middle-seat blocking policy, while reducing the number of passengers seated close to the aisle of an airplane.

ACS Style

Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne; Camelia Delcea; Lina Kattan; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas. Social distancing in airplane seat assignments. Journal of Air Transport Management 2020, 89, 101915 -101915.

AMA Style

Mostafa Salari, R. John Milne, Camelia Delcea, Lina Kattan, Liviu-Adrian Cotfas. Social distancing in airplane seat assignments. Journal of Air Transport Management. 2020; 89 ():101915-101915.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne; Camelia Delcea; Lina Kattan; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas. 2020. "Social distancing in airplane seat assignments." Journal of Air Transport Management 89, no. : 101915-101915.

Journal article
Published: 01 July 2020 in Symmetry
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The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has imposed the need for a series of social distancing restrictions worldwide to mitigate the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic. This applies to many domains, including airplane boarding and seat assignments. As airlines are considering their passengers’ safety during the pandemic, boarding methods should be evaluated both in terms of social distancing norms and the resulting efficiency for the airlines. The present paper analyzes the impact of a series of restrictions that have been imposed or mooted worldwide on the boarding methods used by the airlines, featuring the use of jet-bridges and one-door boarding. To compare the efficacy of classical airplane boarding methods with respect to new social distancing norms, five metrics were used to evaluate their performance. One metric is the time to complete the boarding of the airplane. The other four metrics concern passenger health and reflect the potential exposure to the virus from other passengers through the air and surfaces (e.g., headrests and luggage) touched by passengers. We use the simulation platform in NetLogo to test six common boarding methods under various conditions. The back-to-front by row boarding method results in the longest time to complete boarding but has the advantage of providing the lowest health risk for two metrics. Those two metrics are based on passengers potentially infecting those passengers previously seated in the rows they traverse. Interestingly, those two risks are reduced for most boarding methods when the social distance between adjacent passengers advancing down the aisle is increased, thus indicating an unanticipated benefit stemming from this form of social distancing. The modified reverse pyramid by half zone method provides the shortest time to the completing boarding of the airplane and—along with the WilMA boarding method—provides the lowest health risk stemming from potential infection resulting from seat interferences. Airlines have the difficult task of making tradeoffs between economic productivity and the resulting impact on various health risks.

ACS Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari. Evaluating Classical Airplane Boarding Methods Considering COVID-19 Flying Restrictions. Symmetry 2020, 12, 1087 .

AMA Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas, Camelia Delcea, R. John Milne, Mostafa Salari. Evaluating Classical Airplane Boarding Methods Considering COVID-19 Flying Restrictions. Symmetry. 2020; 12 (7):1087.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari. 2020. "Evaluating Classical Airplane Boarding Methods Considering COVID-19 Flying Restrictions." Symmetry 12, no. 7: 1087.

Journal article
Published: 01 October 2019 in Symmetry
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This paper investigates the time to complete the boarding of a partially occupied two-door airplane when its passengers are transported from the airport terminal to the airplane using two apron buses. We propose a greedy method that assigns each passenger to a particular apron bus based on the passengers’ airplane seat assignments. This greedy approach exploits the airplane’s symmetry by providing essentially the same method for those boarding through the front door of the airplane as those boarding through the rear door of the airplane. The symmetrical properties of window, middle, and aisle seats of each row/side are considered in the proposed method as well. Computer simulation results indicate that, when using the greedy method, the boarding time can be reduced by up to 8.33% compared to the boarding time resulting from the best known practices in the literature, and with up to a 43.72% improvement in boarding time when compared to the boarding method commonly used in many airports. Furthermore, experimental results confirm our hypothesis that when the capacity of the apron buses exceeds the number of passengers to be transported to the airplane, the most time-efficient results of the proposed greedy method occur when an equal number of passengers are assigned to each of the two apron buses.

ACS Style

R. John Milne; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; Mostafa Salari; Liliana Craciun; Anca Gabriela Molanescu. Greedy Method for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses. Symmetry 2019, 11, 1221 .

AMA Style

R. John Milne, Liviu-Adrian Cotfas, Camelia Delcea, Mostafa Salari, Liliana Craciun, Anca Gabriela Molanescu. Greedy Method for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses. Symmetry. 2019; 11 (10):1221.

Chicago/Turabian Style

R. John Milne; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; Mostafa Salari; Liliana Craciun; Anca Gabriela Molanescu. 2019. "Greedy Method for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses." Symmetry 11, no. 10: 1221.

Theoretical article
Published: 24 August 2019 in OPSEARCH
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In this paper, we develop a model to assign airplane seats to ordinary passengers to minimize their boarding time while some seats have been reserved earlier by high priority passengers. Our proposed mixed integer programming model assigns ordinary passengers to seats based on the amount of their carry-on bags and results in the minimum time to complete boarding of the airplane. The proposed model can result in 5% to 20% reductions in the average boarding time compared to the situation when passengers’ luggage is not considered.

ACS Style

Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne; Lina Kattan. Airplane boarding optimization considering reserved seats and passengers’ carry-on bags. OPSEARCH 2019, 56, 806 -823.

AMA Style

Mostafa Salari, R. John Milne, Lina Kattan. Airplane boarding optimization considering reserved seats and passengers’ carry-on bags. OPSEARCH. 2019; 56 (3):806-823.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne; Lina Kattan. 2019. "Airplane boarding optimization considering reserved seats and passengers’ carry-on bags." OPSEARCH 56, no. 3: 806-823.

Journal article
Published: 13 August 2019 in Symmetry
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The use of apron buses has become a common practice at many European airports. Previous studies related to airplane boarding rarely apply when apron buses are used, leaving airlines with no well-researched option except to use the random boarding method. In this paper, we test the time to complete boarding a two-door airplane using various boarding methods with two apron buses. These methods were inspired by the classical outside-in, back-to-front, and reverse-pyramid methods considering the limited number of boarding groups corresponding to the limited number of apron buses used for transporting passengers from the terminal to the aircraft. Unlike earlier publications, we test these methods under partial aircraft occupancy. Furthermore, we test the boarding methods under conditions involving: different passenger occupancy rates, different luggage situations, and with two types of seating assignments—random and based upon passenger seating preferences—by considering the advantages brought by the symmetric layout of the aircraft. Experimental results indicate that the best performing method can reduce the boarding time by up to 38.6% compared to the time resulting from the random boarding method. When the airplane is partially occupied, the best performing methods are reverse pyramid–A, hybrid–A, and hybrid–B, all with similar performances.

ACS Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari; Liliana Crăciun; Anca Gabriela Molănescu. Testing New Methods for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses. Symmetry 2019, 11, 1044 .

AMA Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas, Camelia Delcea, R. John Milne, Mostafa Salari, Liliana Crăciun, Anca Gabriela Molănescu. Testing New Methods for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses. Symmetry. 2019; 11 (8):1044.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Camelia Delcea; R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari; Liliana Crăciun; Anca Gabriela Molănescu. 2019. "Testing New Methods for Boarding a Partially Occupied Airplane Using Apron Buses." Symmetry 11, no. 8: 1044.

Journal article
Published: 05 December 2018 in Sustainability
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Research related to creating new and improved airplane boarding methods has seen continuous advancement, in recent years, while most of the airline companies have remained committed to the traditional boarding methods. Among the most-used boarding methods, around the world, are back-to-front and random boarding with and without assigned seats. While the other boarding methods used in practice possess strict rules for passengers’ behavior, random without assigned seats is dependent on the passengers own way of choosing the “best” seats. The aim of this paper is to meticulously model the passengers’ behavior, especially, in random boarding without assigned seats and to test its efficiency in terms of boarding time and interferences, in comparison with the other commonly-adopted methods (random boarding with assigned seats, window-middle-aisle (WilMA), back-to-front, reverse pyramid, etc.). One of the main challenges in our endeavor was the identification of the real human passengers’ way of reasoning, when selecting their seats, and creating a model in which the agents possess preferences and make decisions, as close to those decisions made by the human passengers, as possible. We model their choices based on completed questionnaires from three hundred and eighty-seven human subjects. This paper describes the resulting agent-based model and results from the simulations.

ACS Style

Camelia Delcea; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne. Investigating the Random Seat Boarding Method without Seat Assignments with Common Boarding Practices Using an Agent-Based Modeling. Sustainability 2018, 10, 4623 .

AMA Style

Camelia Delcea, Liviu-Adrian Cotfas, Mostafa Salari, R. John Milne. Investigating the Random Seat Boarding Method without Seat Assignments with Common Boarding Practices Using an Agent-Based Modeling. Sustainability. 2018; 10 (12):4623.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Camelia Delcea; Liviu-Adrian Cotfas; Mostafa Salari; R. John Milne. 2018. "Investigating the Random Seat Boarding Method without Seat Assignments with Common Boarding Practices Using an Agent-Based Modeling." Sustainability 10, no. 12: 4623.

Journal article
Published: 01 August 2018 in Aerospace
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We present a method that reduces the time it takes to complete the passenger boarding of an airplane. In particular, we describe a two-stage mixed integer programming (MIP) approach, which assigns passengers to seats on an airplane based on the number of bags they carry aboard the plane. The first stage is an MIP that assigns passengers to seats to minimize the time to complete the boarding of the plane. The second-stage MIP also determines seating assignments, while constraining the total boarding time to that determined by the stage-one MIP and maximizing weighted slack times to provide a more robust assignment. Numerical results show that this two-stage approach results in lower average boarding times than the one-stage approach, when the time it takes passengers to walk and sit in their seats is random. Experiments indicate that the magnitude of the improvement is not very sensitive to variations in the slack time weights.

ACS Style

R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari; Lina Kattan. Robust Optimization of Airplane Passenger Seating Assignments. Aerospace 2018, 5, 80 .

AMA Style

R. John Milne, Mostafa Salari, Lina Kattan. Robust Optimization of Airplane Passenger Seating Assignments. Aerospace. 2018; 5 (3):80.

Chicago/Turabian Style

R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari; Lina Kattan. 2018. "Robust Optimization of Airplane Passenger Seating Assignments." Aerospace 5, no. 3: 80.

Journal article
Published: 01 July 2016 in Journal of Air Transport Management
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ACS Style

R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari. Optimization of assigning passengers to seats on airplanes based on their carry-on luggage. Journal of Air Transport Management 2016, 54, 104 -110.

AMA Style

R. John Milne, Mostafa Salari. Optimization of assigning passengers to seats on airplanes based on their carry-on luggage. Journal of Air Transport Management. 2016; 54 ():104-110.

Chicago/Turabian Style

R. John Milne; Mostafa Salari. 2016. "Optimization of assigning passengers to seats on airplanes based on their carry-on luggage." Journal of Air Transport Management 54, no. : 104-110.