Recreating optimized airplane boarding methods using real-time Crowd Simulation

Abstract: Flight delays are costly for both airline companies and the environment. A possible resolution to minimize delays is to facilitate the airplane’s boarding process. Studies have to be conducted in order to find the optimal boarding method. Instead of performing experiments in the real-world, a crowd simulation could possibly be utilized. However, to simulate humans, their behaviors must be abstracted into algorithms and mathematical equations. Consequently, the realism of crowd simulations can be impugned. It is thus relevant to assess the realism of crowd simulations through recreating and comparing simulated results to real-world studies. This is the aim of this thesis, which aspires to recreate airplane boarding with Jack Shabo’s crowd simulation by comparing the results to a real-world study by Jason H. Steffen and Jon Hotchkiss. This study measured the time difference of five different boarding methods. These were the Back-to-front, Block, Random, Wilma and Steffen method. The same methods were recreated in the crowd simulation and the results signify that our simulation and scenario can accurately recreate boarding methods in a realistic manner in the context of time. The significance of our accurate results indicates a possible technique of using crowd simulations for optimizations of crowd flow in airplane boarding, but also beyond that.