Health risks of airplane boarding methods with apron buses when some passengers disregard safe social distancing

Abstract

Many airlines instituted social distancing practices to keep passengers safe during the pandemic. The practices include keeping the middle seats empty, reducing the number of passengers taking an apron bus from the terminal to the airplane, and prescribing that passengers maintain 1 m social distance of separation from other passengers in the aisle while advancing to their seats. However, not all passengers comply with a prescribed 1 m aisle social distance. Through agent-based simulations of passenger boarding when apron buses are used, we examine boarding policies adapted for the pandemic when the level of passenger compliance varies. To compare policies, we consider the duration of time that passengers are too close to other passengers while walking or standing in the aisle. We consider other health metrics from previous research and the time to complete boarding of the airplane. We find that the WilMA–Spread and Reverse-pyramid–Spread boarding methods provide favorable outcomes. Airlines should use WilMA–Spread if their primary concern is the risk to passengers while walking down the aisle and Reverse-pyramid–Spread if they want faster times to complete boarding of the airplane and reduced risk to aisle seat passengers from later boarding passengers. The level of the passengers’ non-compliance with the prescribed aisle social distance can impact a health metric by up to 6.75%—depending on the boarding method and metric. However, non-compliance reduces the time to complete boarding of the airplane by up to 38.8% even though it increases the average time an individual passenger spends boarding.

From Data to Insights: A Bibliometric Assessment of Agent-Based Modeling Applications in Transportation

“…Cluster 1, represented in red in Figure 15, is made by Cotfas L.A., Delcea C., Milne R.J., Salari M., Craciun L., and Molanescu A.G. and features papers written on ABM in airplane boarding [62][63][64][65][66].…”

“…Cluster 3, colored in green in Figure 15, is composed by Sharpanskykh A., Curran R., and Janssen S. The authors have focused on ABM for studying the compliance with safety regulations in airline ground services [72][73][74][75]. Cluster 1, represented in red in Figure 15, is made by Cotfas L.A., Delcea C., Milne R.J., Salari M., Craciun L., and Molanescu A.G. and features papers written on ABM in airplane boarding [62][63][64][65][66].…”

An Analysis of Residual Financial Contagion in Romania’s Banking Market for Mortgage Loans

“…NetLogo is freely available and supported by an active community that provides resources, examples, and pre-defined models that users can utilize and modify according to their specific needs [77,89]. Recently, NetLogo has been used in various applications in the scientific literature, including but not limited to modeling the human behavior involved in an evacuation process [90,91], reducing the risk associated with airplane boarding in pandemic conditions [92], understanding the issues related to fairness and efficiency in an economic context [93], economic recovery after an endemic situation [94], optimization in flexible job-shop scheduling [95], and modeling dynamical processes on complex networks [96].…”

Exploring the Applications of Agent-Based Modeling in Transportation

“…Among the delineated sub-areas within air transportation, the domain of airplane boarding has witnessed a pronounced surge in applications utilizing agent-based modeling [12]. Issues arise such as evaluating the efficiency and sustainability of airplane boarding strategies, simulating airplane boarding through the use of apron buses and the two doors of the airplane, testing classical and new methods for airplane boarding within various conditions, proposing new methods for accelerating the boarding process, analyzing the efficiency of the boarding methods from the perspective of the passenger health [8,13,14].…”