Question

Passengers arrive at the main entrance door of an airline terminal. There are two types of passengers. The first passenger type arrives according to an exponential interarrival distribution with mean of 2.5 minutes and has a check-in time (in minutes) following a gamma distribution with parameters B = 0.4 and a = 14. The second type of passenger arrives according to an exponential distribution with mean of 4 minutes and has a check-in time (in minutes) 1.2 times the first type of passenger. At the check-in counter, the two types of travelers wait in a single line until one of two agents (Bill and Mary) is available to serve them. Mary starts serving passengers only if Bill is busy serving other passengers and a passenger is waiting to start being served. The travel time from the check-in to the boarding gate is distributed uniformly between 5 and 15 minutes. Develop a single replication of length 1,000 minutes. What changes would you recommend to this system if the company wants to avoid check- in waiting time longer than 15 minutes for passengers?

Answer 1

To avoid check-in waiting times longer than 15 minutes for passengers, the airline terminal can implement the following changes:

1. Increase the number of check-in agents to handle a larger volume of passengers simultaneously.
2. Ensure there is always at least one agent available to serve passengers by improving agent scheduling.
3. Analyze passenger arrival patterns and adjust staffing at the check-in counter during peak times.
4. Streamline the check-in process by simplifying procedures and utilizing technology like self-check-in kiosks.
5. Provide real-time information to passengers about estimated waiting times and their position in the queue.
6. Increase the number of boarding gates to prevent congestion and reduce waiting times before boarding.