How to Raise the Check-in Efficiency at an Airport Terminal: A Route Guidance Strategy

The passenger’s motion behavior during the check-in process will directly influence the check-in efficiency. However, little effort has been made to study this topic. This paper incorporates the passenger’s motion behavior into the route guidance strategy to enhance the check-in efficiency. Firstly, an extended social force (SF) model is developed to describe each passenger’s movement at an airport terminal. Secondly, a route guidance strategy accounting for the flight’s remaining departure time and the passenger density is designed to enhance the passengers’ check-in efficiency. Thirdly, a greedy algorithm is designed to search an optimal route for each passenger during the check-in process. Finally, the check-in process of one flight at an airport terminal is selected to testify the extended SF model and the proposed route guidance strategy. The simulation results show that (i) the extended SF model can reasonably describe the motion behavior of each passenger, and (ii) the proposed route-guidance strategy can enhance the check-in efficiency under passengers’ state described by the extend SF model. The results can guide administrators to better organize and manage the check-in process.