Hopscotch Corner

Can we design an economic model of passenger-to-passenger seat exchanges directly between passengers ? If such a model exists, we wish to further consider a passenger audience meeting the following constraints for the air travel use case: ticketed passengers of a commercial flight with publicly available information, passengers possessing a mobile device with GPS and a machine-readable seat assignment, passengers physically present in the waiting area prior to boarding the aircraft, and passengers willing to consider multiple offers before choosing or declining seat offers. Why place those restrictions on the qualification of passengers? We can take them one at a time to explain further. Simplified Economically Coincident Model The above constraints satisfy and meet the criteria for a "double coincidence of wants", from microeconomics. An economic model needs a buyer and seller. We expect goods or services exchanged in this use case to be an exchange of assigned ...

Airline seat inventory metrics, also known as KPI's or Key Performance Indicators, measure industry standard quantitative seat inventory metrics. A quantitative metric provides a measurement as opposed to a qualitative or intangible like user experience, quality and goodwill.  One metric we discuss is a leading indicator of passenger behavior. Another is a lagging indicator of passenger behavior. Think of how your price sensitivity changes when making tradeoffs for flexibility of travel plans. These are reflected by the class of fare's terms and conditions driving your purchase price. Another of our blog posts discussed the differences of direct and indirect measurement of a KPI which we consider in this post in more detail. Metrics are meaningful for making comparisons. Our comparison basis uses time periods for comparing historical seat inventory performance at difference levels like comparing how the same aircraft inventory performs on different travel segments between c...

💺 💺  "First you have to create the signal, and then you have to measure it."  🛫 🛫 Early in my engineering career, I worked at a test stand and RD&E facility design firm . A client, nicknamed Acme, had a design project for a replacement wind tunnel to test heat exchangers. These heat exchangers used the internal working fluid, at one temperature, exchanging heat with another fluid, usually air, at another temperature as the fluid flowed over the exterior. Heat may transfer in either direction as out or into the working fluid in the exchanger. This application removed heat. The client provided optimistic design specifications that included excessive operational ranges for airflow and internal working fluid flow as well as thermal cycling and cycle time. The spec was coupled to excessive temperature and pressure ranges for the internal working fluid and the tunnel airflow. High relative humidity from the outside air also affected the tunnel's ability to cont...

Have you walked the length of an aircraft during a long flight and noticed different moods and vibes? Maybe it was the lighting in some regions or business travelers talking shop and everyone typing away. Depending on your destination, some areas seem more like a party or a movie theatre. Hopscotch Solutions takes the group seating concept another step with a group reseating API. Group Reseating Let's say you need to seat multiple groups of people together on a full flight. Would you handle families differently from business associates? Does one group have priority over the other? Would there be any bias in your methodology? Would you pick and choose who to help? In what order would you help them? We can reframe this as an "unavailable seat inventory" situation because it affects high load factor flights in need of a real-time reseating request system. This situation impacts more than families. Group reseating can result in departure delays. Reseating groups togeth...

What does a "Seat Assignment  API " do? And when it does that, on whose behalf does it do it? Maybe you've heard the API acronym in various descriptions. The Hopscotch Seat Assignment API determines the best seat matches based on your seating preference, seating availability, historical activity and the probability of your getting a particular seat. Introductory concepts were written up in previous posts ( here , here  and here ). We had to first understand why the existing systems neglected this type of transaction. It turned out that the preference engine model was complex, let alone creating a system to actually provide a solution. And on a full flight at that. Imagine what we can do once integrated with a seat assignment system. Seat (Re-)Assignment API The Hopscotch Seat Assignment API provides a computerized interface for exchanging information with another computer. Calling our API as an external and isolated system means it can support : Passenger  electr...

Aircraft seat selection normally presents an overhead view of a seat map to select your seat from the reservation system. "Figure 1: Static Overhead View of Seating Chart" shows a partial seating chart where each point, shown as a sphere, represents a seat. The nose-to-tail direction runs North to South (vertical orientation) and each row has 6 seats per row going West to East, horizontally. The columns, from left to right, can be numbered 1 to 6 representing the Window-Middle-Aisle-Aisle-Middle-Window seat prototypes. The pattern repeats 6 seat across for each row so this could be an B737 Economy cabin. Some columns in the static views appear slightly distorted, especially towards the center columns 3 and 4. The seats in our model are not in the same Cartesian coordinate plane. We are looking at a 2D overhead view, producing some distortion similar to the 1981 Atari game called " Tempest ". Figure 1: Static Overhead View of Seating Chart "Figure 2:...

Are people cooperative airplane passengers? If so, to what extent and with whom do we cooperate? It depends who you ask. Your own answer might depend on who and what they ask of you as well as what you get in return. Of course, we cooperate with airline employees, airport security staff, law enforcement, and so on. That seems intuitive in public interactions. Think instead about cooperation in terms of which passenger you ask when you want to move to another seat. Reseating Mad Lib Do you remember the " Mad Lib " party game of completing a sentences to make a (usually funny) story? Suppose there exists two passengers, each needing to move to another seat. They know nothing about one another (i.e. current seat or preference). Their reason and purpose could be very different from one another; exact opposites even. Our reseating word problem uses 6 statements from which we determine exchange probability. You be "Passenger X" and let another person be "Passe...