Patent ID: 8600785

Claim:
A computerized method for organizing ground transportation of airline passengers, comprising: (a) allowing for the setting of parameters including time windows, available vehicle types, and number of passengers allocated for vehicle type; (b) assigning, by a computer, passengers arriving or departing in a specified time window to a time group; (c) assigning, by a computer, passengers within the time group to one or more terminal groups based upon expected arrival or departure airport terminal for each passenger; (d) counting a number of terminal groups; (e) setting a terminal group counter to zero; (f) incrementing and storing the terminal group counter in a memory; (g) if the terminal group counter exceeds the number of terminal groups go to step (j); (h) defining one of the one or more terminal groups whose passengers are unassigned to a vehicle type as a temporary group; (i) determining, using a computer, if any one of the available vehicle types will accommodate all passengers in the temporary group, if so, (u) choosing an available vehicle type that will accommodate all passengers in the temporary group and has least number of passengers allocated for vehicle type, (v) assigning the passengers in the temporary group to the chosen vehicle type, and (w) returning to step (f), if not, (x) assigning as many passengers from the temporary group to the available vehicle type that accommodates highest number of passengers based upon the number of passengers allocated for vehicle type, (y) redefine the temporary group as those passengers that remain unassigned to a vehicle type, (z) repeat step (i); (j) repeat steps (b) through (i) for time windows with passengers; and (k) displaying one or more passenger assignments on a computer display.