Passenger Cooperation
Here's a possible flight scenario:
You're traveling solo and in the waiting area at your departure gate for your flight. Some passengers wait to board while others mill about, typing and reading on their electronic devices. A gate agent announces that your flight begins boarding in 15 minutes.
While you wait, your smartphone receives a notification from the flight desk asking, "Where do you prefer to sit on your upcoming flight?". You select an answer based on your criteria at the moment. You look up from your smartphone and notice all smartphone users responding to the same question.
Stop. The scenario ends there. Did you answer where you prefer to sit based on:
Preferences about aircraft seating may show low correlation with price. Meaning seat location may not factor into the price the same way for everyone. Someone subject to motion sickness could sit closest to the wing with a view of the horizon out the window. If you suffered from kinetic movement sickness, kinetosis, you might switch and breathe a bit easier. Your fellow passengers may approve.
Commercial flights sometimes need you to make accommodation through cooperation. Other times, it makes accommodations for you via cooperation from others. This isn't about revenue, routes, price, slippage, spoilage, cost of goods sold or seat inventory. You already paid for a ride.
Individual preference may be a moving target affecting cooperation. Reservation systems reserve your seat without substitutions. Flights operate with priority on continuity for timely operation. Aircraft and airlines operate on schedules that avoid cascading effects of schedule deviation.
When time is of the essence, the schedule overlooks negotiation time and personnel required to identify cooperative passengers, negotiate differences, and resolve inequalities. Reciprocal matches for cooperative passengers may be present, especially with passengers of diverse preferences are presented with a variety of options.
The problem grows in complexity when there are schedules to keep while individuals feel differently about cooperation based on their situation. If we were to find a reciprocal match based on your preference, you would receive an offer to exchange seats with another passenger. The offers are based on what both passengers prefer simultaneously, matching each other's seat. If you have a need or desire to use another passenger's seat and they yours, you both received an offer based on what you each prefer. This begins to sound like a computerized dating system with adjustable filters applied before you swipe.
When there are no exact matches for reciprocal passenger-to-passenger matches, we must search for equivalence by performing a perturbation about the desired location and seat prototype. What does that look like from a passenger's perspective? One model is shown below in the "Location Preferences Patterns" diagram. We see a radial, polygon and bezier preference shape.
The "Radial Pattern" illustrates a passenger willing to move to another location within the same cabin class. Maybe a parent traveling with a young person wants to remain within some radius or circle about the other seat. The "Polygon Pattern" shows three passengers with a goal of remaining within a distance of the lavatory in their cabin. It creates a "move area" or boundary of equivalence based on their seat. The "Bezier Pattern" looks like a keyhole pattern. This passenger has their own agenda.
Passengers join an undirected graph as a node on a tree. Hopscotch computes multiple spanning trees to cross vertices, or passenger nodes, seeking to maximize the span based on preference and goodness of fit. We present passengers with those exchange offers and recompute the tree after offers were accepted or rejected. Thus begins the next round after adding and removing passenger nodes and updating the goodness of fit.
You're traveling solo and in the waiting area at your departure gate for your flight. Some passengers wait to board while others mill about, typing and reading on their electronic devices. A gate agent announces that your flight begins boarding in 15 minutes.
While you wait, your smartphone receives a notification from the flight desk asking, "Where do you prefer to sit on your upcoming flight?". You select an answer based on your criteria at the moment. You look up from your smartphone and notice all smartphone users responding to the same question.
Stop. The scenario ends there. Did you answer where you prefer to sit based on:
- Your actual seat location preference?
- Forward or lateral moves based on your current seat location?
- Your purchase price including upgrade charge?
- The dynamic supply-demand curve for your seat?
Preferences about aircraft seating may show low correlation with price. Meaning seat location may not factor into the price the same way for everyone. Someone subject to motion sickness could sit closest to the wing with a view of the horizon out the window. If you suffered from kinetic movement sickness, kinetosis, you might switch and breathe a bit easier. Your fellow passengers may approve.
Commercial flights sometimes need you to make accommodation through cooperation. Other times, it makes accommodations for you via cooperation from others. This isn't about revenue, routes, price, slippage, spoilage, cost of goods sold or seat inventory. You already paid for a ride.
Individual preference may be a moving target affecting cooperation. Reservation systems reserve your seat without substitutions. Flights operate with priority on continuity for timely operation. Aircraft and airlines operate on schedules that avoid cascading effects of schedule deviation.
When time is of the essence, the schedule overlooks negotiation time and personnel required to identify cooperative passengers, negotiate differences, and resolve inequalities. Reciprocal matches for cooperative passengers may be present, especially with passengers of diverse preferences are presented with a variety of options.
The problem grows in complexity when there are schedules to keep while individuals feel differently about cooperation based on their situation. If we were to find a reciprocal match based on your preference, you would receive an offer to exchange seats with another passenger. The offers are based on what both passengers prefer simultaneously, matching each other's seat. If you have a need or desire to use another passenger's seat and they yours, you both received an offer based on what you each prefer. This begins to sound like a computerized dating system with adjustable filters applied before you swipe.
When there are no exact matches for reciprocal passenger-to-passenger matches, we must search for equivalence by performing a perturbation about the desired location and seat prototype. What does that look like from a passenger's perspective? One model is shown below in the "Location Preferences Patterns" diagram. We see a radial, polygon and bezier preference shape.
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| Figure 1: Location Preferences Patterns |
The "Radial Pattern" illustrates a passenger willing to move to another location within the same cabin class. Maybe a parent traveling with a young person wants to remain within some radius or circle about the other seat. The "Polygon Pattern" shows three passengers with a goal of remaining within a distance of the lavatory in their cabin. It creates a "move area" or boundary of equivalence based on their seat. The "Bezier Pattern" looks like a keyhole pattern. This passenger has their own agenda.
Passengers join an undirected graph as a node on a tree. Hopscotch computes multiple spanning trees to cross vertices, or passenger nodes, seeking to maximize the span based on preference and goodness of fit. We present passengers with those exchange offers and recompute the tree after offers were accepted or rejected. Thus begins the next round after adding and removing passenger nodes and updating the goodness of fit.
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