A new method for boarding passengers onto an airplane

We describe a new method to assign seats and to board passengers on an airplane that minimizes the total time to board. Steffen (2008) presents an optimum boarding method that assigns passengers to a specific numerical position in line that depends upon their ticketed seat location. Our method builds upon Steffen by assigning individual passengers to seats based on the amount of luggage they carry. Our heuristic method assigns passengers to seats so that their luggage is distributed evenly throughout the plane. Simulation results indicate that with our method, the total time to board all passengers on a fully loaded airplane is shorter than that of Steffen.