Tracing the Evolution of Ideas in Airplane Boarding Studies: Insights from Thematic Mapping and Overview

The airplane boarding process has become an interesting field for researchers recently, due to the financial and logistical potential that could have affected the millions of flights, as well as the effect it has on an important part of the workforce involved in the transportation field. As most of the processes belonging to airplane procedures when on the airport can be controlled by either the airlines or the airport, the airplane boarding remains at the discretion of the passengers involved in the boarding process. As a result, the efficiency process of this action has been placed at the core of much research in the transportation field, with direct effects on reducing the embarkation costs. Over time, a series of new innovative boarding methods have been proposed in scientific literature, divided into several categories based on their main governing boarding rules. Even more, during the pandemic times, given the new imposed rules related to social distancing, the new boarding methods have been proposed or adapted from the classical boarding methods, in order to reduce the airline costs, while ensuring the reduction of the risk associated with the COVID-19 infection. In this context, the present paper aims to trace the main research areas associated with airplane boarding. To this aim, a dataset of 73 publications was extracted from the Web of Science database and analyzed using thematic mapping techniques. Furthermore, the main research themes have been extracted and presented from the point of view of basic, emerging, motor, and niche themes. Additionally, an overview of the most relevant papers has been provided, highlighting the most important ideas in each paper. The results of the study could further support the researchers in this field by providing a common ground for discussions, as well as for any interested parties in the field of airplane boarding.