Expediting airport security queues through advanced lane assignment

Abstract

Excessive airport security wait times during peak operational periods have been well-documented in crowdsourced data and well-publicized among the news media. While serving a paramount purpose, airport security checkpoints are capacity constrained and frequently stressed, leading to passenger dissatisfaction and system limitations. To alleviate air travelers’ wasted wait time during the security screening process, an innovative queue management technique is explored. Passengers currently flow to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening lanes at terminal checkpoints via a First-Come, First-Serve (FCFS) discipline. However, repeated variations in passenger characteristics and screening times may cause this service discipline to suffer small inefficiencies that aggregately distort resource utilization and throughput speed. This paper proposes an Advance Lane Assignment System (ALAS) in which passengers are directed to specific screening lanes upon arrival to a terminal checkpoint using real-time, autonomous, feedback control. Leveraging existing Bluetooth© technology to assess lane flow rates, control logic can convey lane assignments to passengers at identification authentication gates. System feasibility was analyzed through discrete, dynamic, and probabilistic simulations of a multilane, multiphase queue model with varying traffic intensities and control logic. Basic, discrete-time Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control was found to offer a 12% reduction in average passenger waiting times over the baseline FCFS discipline.