College of Business Research

Airlines today employ various strategies to cut costs and become lean and efficient.

One of the ways that this can be achieved is by improving the boarding process since airplanes only make money while they are in the air. This paper uses simulation approach to deal specifically with the boarding strategies in use today by the major airlines. To properly simulate the boarding process, the simulation model accounts for passenger interferences (aisle & seat), the time it takes to stow away baggage, and the passenger arrival rate through the main cabin door. We applied our simulation model to study the AirTran Boeing 737-700 short haul aircraft. We looked at five major boarding strategies from random to the customary back to front and the results are very encouraging. Our analyses identifies that the arrival rate has an effect on the total boarding time and that the Reverse Pyramid and Window middle Aisle (WilMA) were among the efficient boarding strategies.