Hey
I have the following problem. About half of my airplanes are leaving late (1-2 hours often) due to passenger being very slow at boarding. They are going through security just fine but it takes them forever to arrive at boarding. Often looks like they are just walking around randomly. My layout is a s simply as it can be. When entering through security i have a single rectangular space with two floors.
It could look like some kind of weird pathfinding bug?
Any ideas what i can do?
Could you try to remove the seats on the lower floor?
Usually most passengers take a seat nearby the boarding gate, maybe thereâs a problem if nearby seats are on a different floor.
You could try to build better seatings near boarding desk, too. Laptop-table with bar-chairs is imho best possible and most attractive seatingâŚ
The one logic problem that Iâve noticed: passengers appear to prefer certain seating above others. If it isnât programmed that way, then they certainly act like it.
As an example: I have some table-and-chair seating near my primary shop and restaurant. These are located right near the entrance to the second-floor. The second floor is where boarding occurs and all my jetways connect. These is no other seating below this floor except for that which is outside the secure zone, so once passengers come through security, they canât sit anywhere else. In addition to this seating, I have plenty of regular terminal seating adjacent to all my gates.
Hereâs the general layout of this particular airport -
I have a three-level design. Bottom floor is supposed to be for arrivals (contains baggage claim and the security hub for baggage scanning/transport, staff room). A lot of departures come into this floor, as well, and hang out until check-in opens. Generally not a problem, but it is unintended.
Ground floor is my main check-in terminal (for departing flights) with all the check-in desks and security checkpoints. There is seating, as well. After passing through security checkpoints, passengers take the immediate escalators and go up into the 2nd-floor departure terminal.
To better understand passenger logic, I followed a single person through their entire process once they arrived at the airport.
He arrives on the subfloor (my arrivals zone with baggage claim) and hangs out here in the available seating until his flight check-in opens. Once it opens, he makes his way up the escalators.
After going through check-in and security, he made all the necessary stops upstairs (bathroom, food, shopping). Then he proceeded to his boarding gate, which is actually a decent trek through the terminal (distance canât be helped given the amount of gates and stand sizes).
After making it to the correct boarding gate and seeing that boarding was not yet open, he turned around and went ALL the way back to the table-and-chair seating outside the main shop, despite the fact that there was PLENTY of seating available right near the boarding desk.
From there he simply sat in place until boarding opened. Once boarding opened, he got up from his chair and walked the length of the terminal to his gate.
My primary questions are: why did he feel the need to walk so far away from his boarding desk just to get that specific seat? Do passengers prefer certain seating types to others? If not, why do their actions suggest they do? And if they do prefer certain seating types, should it be changed? Finally, why did he initially walk to the boarding desk if he was only going to turn around anyway? Do passengers have to learn where their gate is or physically see it to be closed?
I, too, have late-boarding passengers, and I havenât yet caught why some of them are so late at this particular airport. Iâve been on the lookout to try and catch someone lollygagging, but thus far I only see them when they are running to the gate. In most cases, Iâve already dismissed the plane and they miss their boarding time slot.
To add to this point, I wish we could toggle an option to automatically dismiss planes at the end of their turnaround time if the only delay is due to slow passengers. If passengers havenât boarded by departure time, thatâs their fault, and my airport cannot be blamed for their lack of urgency.
Just an idea, anyway. Though I am curious about passenger behavior, overall.
As IRL there are always some pax, ignoring that their flight will departure soon, but walking around anywhere to fulfill any specific need.
So to avoid this, make sure that pax can fulfill all their needs nearby their boarding desks.
This boarding area for 8 large stands is working quite well, having nearly 0 delays from late pax, most flights are fully serviced and boarded >1hr before departure time.
So nearby boarding desks are:
-bathrooms
-1x shop, 1x cafe
-high-quality seatings, different types (laptop tables!)
itâs a multilevel setup, too, as pax exit via 2nd floor and enter via security checkpoint on ground floor. central check-in and baggage halls are on 1st basement.
If you set in flight planner âalways send awayâ flights are dismissed automatically, normally around 15mins after departure tima, at the latest. these delays normally do not affect your ratings very much - if there is no other reason for delay. IMHO.
Hopefully this made things a little bit more clear� 
Thank you for the info!
Does this confirm that passengers prefer certain seating types to others?
Also, Iâm still curious why passengers behave the way they do sometimes - like walking to their gate and then immediately turning around to sit somewhere far from where they have to board.
I donât mind if the occasional passenger misses boarding. I understand that does happen.
Finally, I would agree certain terminal setups are more effective, but in my mind it shouldnât matter that much. Iâm sure the next update will help when things are optimized for multi-terminal layouts. Until then, Iâve tried to avoid putting in too many shops and restaurants because it seems to dilute them and it is harder to hit the bonuses.
Yes, I can confirm, for now pax prefer better seatings to less good ones. So e.g. a $$$ seating is preferred to a $$ seating, and so on.
You totally can avoid this by just building only one type of seatings (within unsecure/secure area) as I did for a long time. If there doesnât exist a better alternative, they use closest one⌠
Same for shops/cafes: if you donât care about the rating, you can just not build them, no distractions for pax. Good for testing pax flow in complex airport designsâŚ
That pax are making too long walks, just for a better seating, is IMHO a weakness in pathfinding/behaviour, but there have been several discussions about these things in the past and everything influences everythingâŚ
Imho now all in all it works very well and better as anytimes before, letâs se what future will bring.
These weird behaviours you are describing, are mostly reasonable, but sometimes hard to understand, and sometimes justâŚ
Nevertheless, nowadays these are not affecting gameplay, normally. If you want to dig deeper in pathfinding, search for pathfinding and have fun, fills a book, probablyâŚ
I do not think, that behaviour will change totally in the future, as devs here normally not working like this.
As IRL you only can avoid pax searching for facilities anywhere, by building facilities for critical needs (resting, toilet, food, shopping) everywhere along paxâs paths. And especially at critical points like check-in & boarding. As it is in modern airports IRLâŚ
In my experience itâs not possible to have too many of these facilities, but very likely you are having not enoughâŚ
I donât care about the bonuses, as they are too hard to achieve and financially not needed. A smooth running airport with very few delays earns enough money without bonuses. 
Not very sure, but do the boarding screens have any purpose to the relation of time to the pax?
Not sure what youâre meaning with ârelation of timeââŚ?
As I know boarding screens from boarding desk are for playerâs information when boarding starts, only.
Or are you talking about flight information screens (at âdesksâ)? They have been for decorational purpose only, for now. If they now already affecting rating, I donât know⌠But for pax behaviour I think both are irrelevant.
You can just place single info screens anywhere in the airport (I usually do it in front and after security as well as at the baggage carousel just to imitate reality a bit). Would really be nice if it would somehow effect passengersâ way to the gate. Currently they dont have any.
What Iâd like for example, if you have info screens after security, they know whether they still have time for shopping or not. Without the screens a few of them will just go shopping even if boarding already starts (while most of them of course should still know the time). Or without screens maybe a few just go to another gate first before making their way to the right one.
yah I did mean the one in the desks. sry it wasnât clear.
also yah I did think the info screens were decoration, thanks for the clarification though,
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