Reducing airplane boarding time by accounting for passengers' individual properties: A simulation based on cellular automaton

•An airplane boarding model is proposed based on cellular automata.•The improved strategy is designed based on luggage property.•The improved strategy avoids seat interference and reduces aisle interference.•The improved strategy increases parallel boarding ability.•Simulation results reveal differences among various strategies.

The increase of air travel puts tremendous burden on airline companies. A time saving boarding strategy is required to improve the utilization of airplane boarding time and explore flexible time management strategies. Firstly, an improved boarding strategy is introduced by assigning individual passengers to seats based on the number of luggage they carry. Passengers with the most luggage board onto the plane first. To test the behavior of boarding strategies under different conditions, a sophisticated simulation environment based on cellular automata model is designed. Simulation results indicate that the improved boarding strategy shows an excellent efficiency and robustness comparing with other strategies.