Aeroplane Seating Assignment

Abstract

The seating assignment problem in aeroplanes is a crucial issue for every airline company, especially Saudi Arabian Airlines, whose many problems arranging seats for their customers, most of whom are from Saudi Arabia (Alsharq al-Awsat News, 2007), were evidenced by a recent online survey (Appendix A1). It appears that three main constraints are faced in every flight. First, two people from different genders prefer not to sit next to each other if they do not belong to the same family. Second, families or groups of friends always prefer to sit close to each other. Third, all other sitting preferences are neglected while considering the importance of the two previous constraints.In this paper, we are going to consider several solutions to solve this problem in a way that is acceptable to all, with a comparison between these different solutions achieved to best solve the problem.