Temporal Patterns Underlying Domestic Departure Passengers Behavior in the Airport

Air travelers' behavior is closely related to the operational performance of any airport terminal. Much of previous research has focused on how airport operators balance the number of facilities in a terminal and the Level of Service (LOS), while the behavior of passengers is less considered. Not much is known, however, about passenger's behavior during the entire departure process in an airport. In this study, we analyze empirical departure passenger's data to gain an insight into the regular patterns of their activities in an airport. We find that there exist two distinguished temporal patterns during two discretionary periods- post check-in and pre-security check, post security check and pre-boarding. The time that departure passengers spend in these two periods is well approximated by a double power-law distribution and an exponential truncated power-law distribution respectively. The two distinguished distributions suggest that there may be different mechanisms underlying passengers' behavior as indicated by previous studies on human mobility. We introduce a stochastic model that considers traveling experience and time pressure to capture the decision dynamics of human behavior. Simulation results suggest that traveling experience and time pressure dominate passenger's decisions before and after security respectively. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of human dynamics, and also offer the potential for optimizing and simulation of airport terminal operation.