This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon.
Open AccessArticle
Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Aircraft Round-Trip Times Using Phase Type Distributions
by
Srinivas R. Chakravarthy
Srinivas R. Chakravarthy
Departments of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering & Mathematics, Kettering University, Flint, MI 48504, USA
Mathematics 2024, 12(17), 2795; https://doi.org/10.3390/math12172795 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 4 July 2024
/
Revised: 5 September 2024
/
Accepted: 9 September 2024
/
Published: 9 September 2024
Abstract
One of the major issues facing commercial airlines is the time that it takes to board passengers. Further, most airlines wish to increase the number of trips that an aircraft can make between two or more cities. Thus, reducing the overall boarding times by a few minutes will have a significant impact on the number of trips made by an aircraft, as well as enabling improvements in key measures such as the median and 75th and 95th percentiles. Looking at such measures other than the mean is critical as it is well known that the mean can under- or overestimate the performance of any model. While there is considerable literature on the study of strategies to decrease boarding times, the same cannot be said about the study of the boarding time given a particular strategy for boarding. Thus, the focus of this paper is to study analytically (using suitable stochastic models) and numerically the impact of reducing the average time on the key measures to help the system to plan accordingly. This is achieved using a well-known probability distribution, namely the phase type distribution, to model various events involved in the boarding process. Illustrative numerical results show a reduction in the percentile values when the average boarding times are decreased. Understanding the percentiles of the boarding times, as opposed to relying only on the average boarding times, will help management to adopt a better boarding strategy that in turn will lead to an increase in the number of trips that an aircraft can make.
Share and Cite
MDPI and ACS Style
Chakravarthy, S.R.
Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Aircraft Round-Trip Times Using Phase Type Distributions. Mathematics 2024, 12, 2795.
https://doi.org/10.3390/math12172795
AMA Style
Chakravarthy SR.
Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Aircraft Round-Trip Times Using Phase Type Distributions. Mathematics. 2024; 12(17):2795.
https://doi.org/10.3390/math12172795
Chicago/Turabian Style
Chakravarthy, Srinivas R.
2024. "Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Aircraft Round-Trip Times Using Phase Type Distributions" Mathematics 12, no. 17: 2795.
https://doi.org/10.3390/math12172795
Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details
here.
Article Metrics
Article Access Statistics
For more information on the journal statistics, click
here.
Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view.