Determining Optimal Airline Seating Assignments to Maximize Customer Satisfaction

Abstract

Seating on a flight poses a perennial problem for both airlines and their customers. Since airlines lack an organized system to optimize customers’ seat preferences, the seats customers end up sitting in on a flight are the combination of seats chosen by certain customers in advance, randomly generated seat assignments, and ad hoc seat assignment changes performed by airline personnel. Not only does this result in customer dissatisfaction and negative publicity for airlines, it also leads to additional work for airline personnel who have to deal with unhappy customers.

The aim of this project is to propose a method for automatic seat assignment that guarantees satisfaction for the largest number of customers. To achieve this goal, we formulate the question of satisfaction-maximizing seat assignment on a commercial aircraft as an optimization problem whose parameters (obtained from existing airline data) include proportion of seats occupied by route, pre-existing aircraft configurations, customer group sizes, and preferences for window or aisle seats. This method will provide a practical solution for optimal seat assignment that can be used to improve customer satisfaction across multiple market circumstances, drive better brand image for airlines, and reduce personnel workloads at check-in.