Letting Slower Passengers Board Airplane First Really Is Faster, Study Finds (arstechnica.com) 166
According to physicist Jason Steffen, letting slower passengers board airplanes first actually results in a more efficient process and less time before takeoff. An anonymous reader shares a report from Ars Technica: Back in 2011, Jason Steffen, now a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, became intrigued by the problem and applied the same optimization routine used to solve the famous traveling salesman problem to airline boarding strategies. Steffen fully expected that boarding from the back to the front would be the most efficient strategy and was surprised when his results showed that strategy was actually the least efficient. The most efficient, aka the "Steffen method," has the passengers board in a series of waves. "Adjacent passengers in line will be seated two rows apart from each other," Steffen wrote at The Conversation in 2014. "The first wave of passengers would be, in order, 30A, 28A, 26A, 24A, and so on, starting from the back."
Field tests bore out the results, showing that Steffen's method was almost twice as fast as boarding back-to-front or rotating blocks of rows and 20-30 percent faster than random boarding. The key is parallelism, according to Steffen: the ideal scenario is having more than one person sitting down at the same time. "The more parallel you can make the boarding process, the faster it will go," he told Ars. "It's not about structuring things as much as it is about finding the best way to facilitate multiple people sitting down at the same time." Steffen used a standard agent-based model using particles to represent individual agents. This latest study takes a different approach, modeling the boarding process using Lorentzian geometry -- the mathematical foundation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Co-author Sveinung Erland of Western Norway University and colleagues from Latvia and Israel exploited the well-known connection between microscopic dynamics of interacting particles and macroscopic properties and applied it to the boarding process. In this case, the microscopic interacting particles are the passengers waiting in line to board, and the macroscopic property is how long it takes all the passengers to settle into their assigned seats. The paper has been published in the journal Physical Review E.
Field tests bore out the results, showing that Steffen's method was almost twice as fast as boarding back-to-front or rotating blocks of rows and 20-30 percent faster than random boarding. The key is parallelism, according to Steffen: the ideal scenario is having more than one person sitting down at the same time. "The more parallel you can make the boarding process, the faster it will go," he told Ars. "It's not about structuring things as much as it is about finding the best way to facilitate multiple people sitting down at the same time." Steffen used a standard agent-based model using particles to represent individual agents. This latest study takes a different approach, modeling the boarding process using Lorentzian geometry -- the mathematical foundation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Co-author Sveinung Erland of Western Norway University and colleagues from Latvia and Israel exploited the well-known connection between microscopic dynamics of interacting particles and macroscopic properties and applied it to the boarding process. In this case, the microscopic interacting particles are the passengers waiting in line to board, and the macroscopic property is how long it takes all the passengers to settle into their assigned seats. The paper has been published in the journal Physical Review E.
Neat... (Score:2)
...but is it really useful information?
Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes an ideal assumption, which is that the people who boarded before you (one in front, and one in back) left an open space in the upper storage compartment.
When you get to your seat and go to store your carry-on in the overhead, you'll find there's no room, and have to go forward or back to find an empty space.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the plane gets mostly full, that's not an unreasonable assumption. Today, more than a backpack or small personal bag costs money one way or another, so the number of people who _need_ that much overhead space has come down quite a lot. It's the "Karens", who "demand to see a manager" at the boarding gate or after they've boarded who delay everyone. I could see a benefit to boarding them semi-randomly.
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> there really should be a special compartment in the cargo hold for that kind of people
Perhaps they could just fly Delta?
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In my opinion there really should be a special compartment in the cargo hold for that kind of people, preferably non-pressurized and non-heated ;)
Certainly for the American teens who put their oversized bag in the first empty overhead bin they see then saunter off down the plan to find their seat.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Funny)
My boarding method, for Complete Bastard Airlines [youtube.com], is that you get ten minutes to board and if you miss that because you're spending the ENTIRE TIME FUCKING RUMMAGING AROUND IN YOUR BACKPACK WHILE STANDING IN THE AISLE, well, there's always later flights available, have your credit card ready.
There's more, too. If you've got a screaming baby, please sit in the rows marked "drop chutes". Too fat to fit in a seat? No problems, just head to the back and ask our chefs to accommodate you. Tastes just like pork... uhh, chicken.
Oh, and we've got something special for anyone thinking of hauling on six suitcases and two backpacks, but that's left as a surprise for when you fly with us.
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My boarding method, for Complete Bastard Airlines [youtube.com], is that you get ten minutes to board and if you miss that because you're spending the ENTIRE TIME FUCKING RUMMAGING AROUND IN YOUR BACKPACK WHILE STANDING IN THE AISLE, well, there's always later flights available, have your credit card ready.
Yep. I've noticed it only takes them half as long to get off the plane when it interests them.
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Yep. I've noticed it only takes them half as long to get off the plane when it interests them.
We've got that covered as well, we pump smoke into the cabin and set off fire alarms. We can clear a load of passengers in under five minutes.
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The cleaning crew is a little annoyed about having to scrape the trampled remains of Granny off the floor, though.
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My boarding method, for Complete Bastard Airlines [youtube.com], is that you get ten minutes to board and if you miss that because you're spending the ENTIRE TIME FUCKING RUMMAGING AROUND IN YOUR BACKPACK WHILE STANDING IN THE AISLE, well, there's always later flights available, have your credit card ready.
Reminds me of when I used to work at an airport boarding international flights. It was an almost daily occurrence to have people come sauntering up after the door closed, a fresh cup of Starbucks in hand, then start screaming to let them on the flight. In fact, there were multiple times when, if we still had ticketed passengers who hadn't boarded yet and it was time to close the door (remember people, departure means departure from the gate, not locking up the plane) I would go out to the hallway and look
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you don't know where that floor has been.
"It has always been here." -- Kosh
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That's the exact opposite of the reality of modern airline travel.
Because a lot of airlines have reduced check-in luggage, hand luggage has increased significantly over the years.
In fact, many airlines even offer a zero check-in luggage option such that the only luggage option IS hand luggage. Such a thing never even existed about 15 years ago.
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That's because they can frequently make more carrying cargo than people on some routes. If you're ever bumped from a flight for weight or overload considerations that's what's happening. Be polite to the gate staff, it's not their fault.
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That’s only because US airlines allow people to board with absurdly large carryon.
What about boarding window, middle, aisle.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
Has been tested, is a few % faster but breaks down in practice because people who travel together want to board together, especially if one of them is a child.
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The problem is people standing in the isle while they stow their stuff.
It doesn't matter where they finally sit.
Re:Not likely (Score:4, Insightful)
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Passenger flights also carry cargo. The more passenger baggage in the hold, the less cargo they can carry. That's why airlines charge for hold luggage.
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The low-cost carriers, which have the shortest turnarounds (especially on short trips) and are therefore the most likely to be interested in faster boarding, do not carry cargo apart from passenger luggage.
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This makes an ideal assumption, which is that the people who boarded before you (one in front, and one in back) left an open space in the upper storage compartment.
When you get to your seat and go to store your carry-on in the overhead, you'll find there's no room, and have to go forward or back to find an empty space.
Airlines need to start enforcing carry on baggage limits. I have a "massive" 30L backpack, if what I need for a trip cant fit in it, I'll check a bag. I'm not the problem, it's the people refusing to check bags, either out of cheapness or arrogance (I.E. the "I'm not waiting to collect a bag" crowd). If people with oversized carry on bags were stopped at the gate, we'd all have plenty of room in the overhead bins.
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Airlines need to start enforcing carry on baggage limits. I have a "massive" 30L backpack, if what I need for a trip cant fit in it, I'll check a bag. I'm not the problem, it's the people refusing to check bags, either out of cheapness or arrogance (I.E. the "I'm not waiting to collect a bag" crowd). If people with oversized carry on bags were stopped at the gate, we'd all have plenty of room in the overhead bins.
You mean they don't?
It's been a while since I went to the USA but here in Europe they're really strict. Most airlines here have a bag monitor who goes down the line before boarding. If your bag doesn't fit completely inside their "maximum allowed size" box then you're charged extra for it.
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Airlines need to start enforcing carry on baggage limits. I have a "massive" 30L backpack, if what I need for a trip cant fit in it, I'll check a bag. I'm not the problem, it's the people refusing to check bags, either out of cheapness or arrogance (I.E. the "I'm not waiting to collect a bag" crowd). If people with oversized carry on bags were stopped at the gate, we'd all have plenty of room in the overhead bins.
You mean they don't?
It's been a while since I went to the USA but here in Europe they're really strict. Most airlines here have a bag monitor who goes down the line before boarding. If your bag doesn't fit completely inside their "maximum allowed size" box then you're charged extra for it.
These days almost every flight is a full flight so the gate agents will often offer/ask passengers if they want to check bags at the gate to free up overhead space. Some people will shoot for this from the get go because you basically get a free checked bag or 2. In some cases I've also seen forced checking of rollerboard carry ons, but that is a little more rare.
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I'm not the problem, it's the people refusing to check bags, either out of cheapness or arrogance (I.E. the "I'm not waiting to collect a bag" crowd).
I'm actually in the "if I carry on, the airline/TSA can't lose/break/steal my stuff crowd." If that wasn't such a problem, I'd be checking a lot more bags instead of bending over backwards to fit everything I need in a carry-on.
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Airlines need to start enforcing carry on baggage limits. I have a "massive" 30L backpack, if what I need for a trip cant fit in it, I'll check a bag. I'm not the problem, it's the people refusing to check bags, either out of cheapness or arrogance (I.E. the "I'm not waiting to collect a bag" crowd). If people with oversized carry on bags were stopped at the gate, we'd all have plenty of room in the overhead bins.
Air Canada didn't on the flight I was on last week (CAN$30 or so for each checked bag). A number of people boarded with absolutely huge carry-ons. One early 20s guy a) had apparently never been on a flight before because he could not find his seat given the information on the boarding pass, and b) had a gigantic piece of luggage that looked like it would take up at least half of an entire overhead bin. I helped him find his seat, but left him shaking his head, bewildered about what he was going to do wit
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It's useful for conspiracy theorists who believe that there are shadowy powers that control the boarding sequences of commercial airlines.
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Wendover Productions already covered this (of course).
Basically, there are a bunch of strategies that will work for faster boarding, but airlines aren't going to use them. The higher paying passengers will board first, so they get the overhead bin space first, people with bags that won't fit will have to have them checked. Thus, encouraging people to pay for more expensive tickets and earlier boarding groups.
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The real question is whether it's faster to board from back to front, or front to back.
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Yep I immediately thought of this video too. There are ways to do boarding much better but they all fail when faced with reality. Ideally you'd want to funnel the passengers in a precise order down to the exact seat, as the video demonstrates, but you'll never get people to line up that way.
Like maybe you could have seating in the waiting area arranged in this order based on the assigned seats: you come in, find the correct waiting seat based on where you'll be in the aircraft, and start boarding after the
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Of course there are better methods but people are the problem. Passengers are selfish and tend to act in what they think is best for them. Airlines are greedy and typically implement whatever method makes them the most money.
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Fastest is to board the ranks first that are farest away from the doors.
When you start boarding the rows closer to the doors, it does not matter that the others afe still standing around in the aisl trying to store their stuff.
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Isn't this done already? I remember having seen this or something very similiar in action boarding at Detroit Airport two or three years ago. Four tiers of boarding, with the first tier being the premium tickets and handicapped, and the others in IIRC different sectors and alternating rows.
The Slowpokes among the passengers moaned quite a lot about this "complicated" system and even most Normies were quite unhappy about it, because apparently very few non-nerdy people can accept sitting outside the aircraft
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On the contrary, this isn't done already, and your example of premium boarding first directly contradicts the finding that boarding slowest passengers first is optimum approach. Consider that premium passengers are seated at front so have fastest transit time, atop having less seats per row so less impediment to loading luggage, so premium passengers will overall be faster than economy passengers and thus should be boarded LAST, yet premium passengers are boarded first despite penalty for overall delay. It
Misplaced priority (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue is more about overhead luggage stowage than taking your seat for most people.
The corollary objective though is to minimize the time people wait in lines, with a higher priority given to your more valuable passengers. Total boarding time is much less critical within practical ranges.
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Eventually maybe the airlines will figure out that banning suitcases as carry on speeds things up a lot. I suspect so much so that the airline would save money letting passengers check them for free.
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I suspect so much so that the airline would save money letting passengers check them for free.
I suspect they already did the math on that and came to the opposite conclusion.
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Thus I'd also highly suspect the research results between different airlines (especially budget ones that charges for check-in luggage) would greatly differ, with the hand-carry / check-in charges becoming a strong predictor of boarding time and influencing which would have been the fastest loading method.
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Actually, the corollary objective here is to minimise on-the-ground time of the plane. The plane earns money when in flight, so making sure that the boarding process goes faster will boost the airline's bottom line by a few percent because the airplane can shave a few minutes off of its time on the ground.
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Yes and no; the airlines want fast turn times, but they also need schedule buffer. Simultaneous loading and unloading of passengers (front+rear) would provide a greater reduction in turn time, but no airline is trying to go that far for good reason. The capital cost of a single aisle plane is about $5-10k per day depending on age. If you are looking at 8@2 hour segments per day, that is 1,200-1,600 seats per day, or $8/seat at the high end. An extra segment drops that by $0.50.
All other major costs (includi
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Burbank Airport also does front and rear boarding. It's only practical for small airports that don't have jetways though. Or for giant airports and giant planes where they can connect two jetways.
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Several airports that serve Southwest Airlines have dual jetways. The issue with the rear door jetway is that it has to maneuver a long distance after the plane has due to the wing needing to pass through the space it needs to occupy, so its benefit is mainly for boarding rather than deplaning.
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Yes and no; the airlines want fast turn times, but they also need schedule buffer. Simultaneous loading and unloading of passengers (front+rear) would provide a greater reduction in turn time, but no airline is trying to go that far for good reason. The capital cost of a single aisle plane is about $5-10k per day depending on age. If you are looking at 8@2 hour segments per day, that is 1,200-1,600 seats per day, or $8/seat at the high end. An extra segment drops that by $0.50.
All other major costs (including staff) are per block hour, so boarding time does not play a factor.
Now, it is a different story if you are Hawaiian Airlines running 16-18 segments per day on inter-island flights, but they are a huge outlier.
Lots of airline does that.. Though it is not up the airline. It is controlled by the airport, and all the airlines in airports without skywalks (the stupid metal tubes), usually have boarding in both ends as it is easy and obvious with mobile stairs.
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"the airlines want fast turn times, but they also need schedule buffer."
Reducing boarding time gives you more buffer time without extending the schedule.
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I never understood why they boarded first class passengers first. I'd rather wait a bit longer in the lounge instead of sitting on the plane for another 20 minutes while all the economy class peasants shuffle past.
Not that I've ever flown first class, I'm just dreaming about it when I'm an economy class peasant.
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To stop the assholes in the last row from putting their carry-on bags in the first open bin in the front. That would force the upper class passengers to move back to get their bags when leaving the plane slowing everyone down included the assholes in the back row, but the assholes in the back row are too dumb to realize they are just slowing themselves down.
Mind you, I have turned up later in the boarding process when on a plane where there are either multiple doors or the business class section is to the l
Focus on security screening for bigger savings (Score:5, Insightful)
You might save 3 minutes in boarding yet wasted 30 minutes in the security screening queues.
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If the passengers are late because of security. The airlines can just sell their tickets to others. Hence, they're never going to optimize that part.
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I remember a time when "checking-in" meant you were physically present at the airport and ready to board. from that point on it was the airlines problem to get you to the plane on time. Now the risk of getting stuck in security is fully dumped onto the passenger.
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If the passengers are late because of security. The airlines can just sell their tickets to others. Hence, they're never going to optimize that part.
Airlines are not in charge of airport security... So it's not their job to optimise it.
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You might save 3 minutes in boarding yet wasted 30 minutes in the security screening queues.
You need to come to London. London Heathrow airport is one of the few airports where I'll say that rocking up 2 hours before your flight is plenty of time. Security is organised and fast, the biggest problems are the fact US rules have been foisted on us so we still need to take off our belts. You'll spend more time walking to your gate than getting through security at Heathrow.
I've had similar experiences at Amsterdam Schipol airport. Both airports handle in excess of 35 million passengers a year.
Con
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It depends which terminal and how busy it is. Most recently I went through Heathrow Terminal 5 and security lines were pretty long. They also arrange it so that it's very hard to determine which queue avoids the nudie scanners, where as at Tokyo Haneda they signpost it for you.
The biggest issue with Heathrow, especially the supposedly state-of-the-art Terminal 5, is that the baggage handling is incredibly slow. At Narita you wait 10 minutes for your bag, at Heathrow Terminal 5 you wait an hour. It's really
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You might save 3 minutes in boarding yet wasted 30 minutes in the security screening queues.
If you're in the US and travel with any frequency at all, do yourself a big favor and apply for Global Entry. It'll cost you $100 and an annoying trip to the airport (usually) for an interview and fingerprinting, but you'll get to use the TSA Pre-check lines for five years. Keep your shoes on, your laptop in your bag and walk through the metal detector. Better yet, the line is typically dramatically shorter and filled with other people who do this all the time and have optimized for it.
I routinely arri
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The airlines are not interested in YOUR time wasted, only in the time it takes to turnaround the aircraft.
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You might save 3 minutes in boarding yet wasted 30 minutes in the security screening queues.
The security screening queues are caused SOLELY by incompetence. If there wasn't enough capacity the queue would grow all day until all passengers miss their flights. Without enough capacity queues are only created due to the capacity not being applied timely, which is trivial to do when you literally have a schedule of when passengers need to get through and to their planes.
Even Faster (Score:5, Insightful)
Would be eliminating the fee for checked luggage. IMO a big part of why boarding is slow is people looking for overhead storage.
For me the speed of boarding is whatever, more annoying is when disembarking the bozos that get in the aisle that aren't ready to exit the plane making everyone stuck behind them wait for them to get their shit together.
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The problem with that is that having checked luggage adds ~30 minutes of waiting at the destination airport and non-zero risk of your stuff being lost (and the risk increases the further away from home you are). If I can make the trip with just carry-on I'll do it every time. Sometimes I check the bag on the return trip. It's necessary if you bring back stuff like liquor, plus it doesn't matter so much if the bag gets home a week or three later. At home I have other clothes to wear.
You can sometimes volunte
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Would be eliminating the fee for checked luggage. IMO a big part of why boarding is slow is people looking for overhead storage.
This.
Ever since you don't have a free bag anymore, I noticed that overhead bins are regularily filled to and often beyond capacity. And finding a free space somewhere takes a lot of time, clogging up the process.
It's also why I've moved from my previous "anyway it doesn't fly faster, let's wait here with room and a view and board near the end" attitude to "let's board early so I have an overhead bin".
Sad, really.
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It's also why I've moved from my previous "anyway it doesn't fly faster, let's wait here with room and a view and board near the end" attitude to "let's board early so I have an overhead bin".
My strategy is "let's board early so I can stop having to pay attention to whatever the airline people are doing and focus on whatever I'm doing."
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Would be eliminating the fee for checked luggage. IMO a big part of why boarding is slow is people looking for overhead storage.
Or the equivalent and more lucrative strategy that airlines are already working up to: Charging as much (or more) for carry-on luggage.
Personally, I'll never check luggage if I can possibly avoid it. I hate waiting at the luggage carousel, and I've had too many experiences where my luggage went astray. I once had to attend a business meeting wearing ripped cutoff jeans and an old t-shirt because my luggage didn't show up (this was in Australia, and I arrived on Sunday afternoon and the meeting was at 8
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Gate lice, not remaining seated, clogging the aisle when (un)boarding, passengers fighting over luggage space,
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Yeah departing is where you save time IMO, since the planes will still wait for the one family that's in first class and running 10min behind anyways. Think every plane I've been on I was sitted and waiting for at least 20min before the plane actually taxied.
I find it worse how long planes take to turn off the seat belt signs and let you use the washrooms. I've had some shorter hop flights say 2.5hrs where you spent 10min in line to board, then 30min on the ground before take off, then another 30min or so b
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That's why southwest still does free bags. They want planes on the ground as little time as possible, thus open seating and no bag fee translates directly to lower costs.
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Would be eliminating the fee for checked luggage. IMO a big part of why boarding is slow is people looking for overhead storage.
Baggage fees have never stopped me from checking a bag. Worrying about having luggage lost, stolen, or damaged is why I always try to carry on.
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"Baggage fees have never stopped me from checking a bag. "
But it stops *other people* from checking a bag, which slows *you* down.
No one follows the rules anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No one follows the rules anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
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Most gate agents probably learn very fast that arguing with a passenger about this will delay the boarding process a lot more than letting him through. Which is why arguing is the second strategy people adopt when sneaking by didn't work.
Re:No one follows the rules anyway (Score:4, Informative)
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Most gate agents probably learn very fast that arguing with a passenger about this will delay the boarding process a lot more than letting him through. Which is why arguing is the second strategy people adopt when sneaking by didn't work.
I regularly see gate agents sending people to the back of the line. Most of them seem to say it quite a bit louder than necessary, to shame the passenger a bit. I've even seen one who looked at the boarding pass and, without a word, turned and grabbed the phone to make a gate announcement and reminded everyone -- in an irritated tone which guaranteed that everyone turned to look -- that they must wait until their zone before boarding, and that right now the plain was boarding zone X, not zone Y. The agen
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At best, the gate agent knows whether the passenger next in line has the current group number or the higher lower number. However, until the next group higher than mine is called I can't tell whether the people between me and the gate have an equal or lower group number, and are just taking their turn to get the pass scanned and board, or are in a higher group and are blocking my way.
That is almost never the case (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact everyone in the 2 zones behind us was already on the plane
There is no way any airline, except maybe in some third world country, is letting people board out of zone order. I have been on a lot of flights all over the world and they have always carefully checked the zone on peoples ticket.
It's not like there is arguing, they tell the people they are in the wrong boarding group and the people leave to come back on later.
Whatever you saw was very much an exception to how boarding works for most of the world (I think Iceland was a free-for-all like that though).
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Whatever you saw was very much an exception to how boarding works for most of the world (I think Iceland was a free-for-all like that though).
Heh. My favorite was Air Rarotonga. The gate agent just shouted "11:00 AM for Mangaia now boarding" from the open doorway out to the tarmac, then walked away. No security check. No boarding pass check. The pilot just craned his neck around and counted noses before taking off. Of course, the plane only seated 15.
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Ah, that's why (Score:2)
...people with disabilities, children traveling alone etc have been boarded first since the war.
But more seriously, all these 'systems' seem to assume that there's only single passengers and not families with children, religious groups, clubs, friends, and other many-headed groups.
Wrong Research (Score:2)
Great result, but probably impossible to implement (Score:2)
As a very frequent traveller, I find that the comments opposed to this scheme, here seem to have missed the boat. All of the challenges described so far - (passengers not being smart enough to understand the scheme (they don't have to be smart - the airlines just implement the boarding process with boarding numbers on their ticket), time is being saved in the wrong place - boarding vs security (security lines are an airport problem and don't really cost the airlines money; the boarding process being ineffic
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I've always been puzzled about South West. Do people who go up in status get preferred seating? I'm not sure how their loyalty program rewards frequent travellers.
A-List on Southwest gets you earlier boarding, so you are more likely to get the seats you want. Their reward programs are a little different than the other airlines, but good. In particular, their Companion Pass is a really nice benefit.
I travel a lot for business and on average, I'll take Southwest over the other major airlines assuming they have a direct flight. I say that as someone who also has Platinum on AA, so it's not that I only fly Southwest.
I have said for years... (Score:2)
1) Let handicapped board
2) Let families with children board next.
And you'll reduce the remaining boarding time quickly. One of the biggest delays in flight boarding stems from the fact that most families, are not going to afford the premium boarding. So they wind up boarding toward the end. (Plus it is a lot more challenging to get out the door with an infant and a toddler, than as a single person.)
Now that family is trying to find a block of seats in the same row and/or column. This is important to them
Boarding roulette (Score:2)
Overhead storage space is the reason (Score:2)
Make sure there is enough for everyone, strictly enforce the size and weight limits, have a crew to pre load all bags first, boarding time can be reduced. But the saving the time and hassle of passengers is not the priority. Rest of the airplane turn around time is longer than boarding time. So there is no incentive to minimize it any fur
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There is not enough storage space overhead. There is a fee for checked bag now a days invariably. People lug bigger and bigger suitcases far beyond their ability to carry.
Make sure there is enough for everyone, strictly enforce the size and weight limits, have a crew to pre load all bags first, boarding time can be reduced. But the saving the time and hassle of passengers is not the priority. Rest of the airplane turn around time is longer than boarding time. So there is no incentive to minimize it any further.
People also need to learn to pack more efficiently. I work for an airline so don't have to worry about paying for checked bags but I still rarely check bags unless absolutely necessary. If I am flying somewhere for less than a week my baggage consists of a backpack for under the seat and a duffel bag that I keep less than full so it can squeeze into any small available space in an overhead. I just don't want to fool with baggage claim when I land, I want to walk right out.
During the summers in college I
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On my last trip abroad I had toilet roll with me. And duct tape, parachute cord, magnetic hooks, a larger marker pen and enough clothes to wear clean underwear and shirts every day for ten days without washing anything. Then I packed a washing machine too.
All of that was checked. Carry on was the $8000 of camera kit.
Sure, I was only gone for three months and only visited five continents, but you always want to be prepared.
Meatspace gets in the way (Score:3)
All of these models are such oversimplification to the point of being useless in real life.
1) If they call "group 6 may now board", the order of the passengers within that group is completely random. This algorithm assumes you can board passengers sorted individually. Are they supposed to spend 2 hours prior to boarding time organizing passengers into a 1-n line? This basically means prioritizing boarding time over passenger comfort.
2) People pay to board first. The study tries to maximize boarding time, but the real goal is to maximize revenue and passenger comfort, so this should be taken into account.
3) Overhead bin space competition causes lots of delays as people walk back and forth looking for space.
4) All these models assume the passengers are independent. You cannot board kids by themselves. Why can't these model take into account families instead of idealized independent passengers?
5) How exactly would you determine who is a slower passenger? Does the gate agent guestimates based on age, weight, gender, race, etc? yeah, that won't cause problems. Do you ask passengers "are you fast or slow?", yeap, totally fine, nobody would lie or get offended right?
If you have an idealized model of perfectly independent, honest, sortable, patient passengers, where the _only_ thing that matters is boarding time, this problem becomes *trivial*. As in any half decent computer science can come up with a good result and claim to solve what no airline can.
Re: (Score:3)
If you have an idealized model of perfectly independent, honest, sortable, patient passengers, where the _only_ thing that matters is boarding time, this problem becomes *trivial*. As in any half decent computer science can come up with a good result and claim to solve what no airline can.
Clearly this simulation assumes perfectly spherical passengers boarding a frictionless plane.
Thank you, I'll see myself out.
The curse of being analytical (Score:2)
So this reminds me, in general, of a bit of a curse I think software developers and people who are analytical in general bear. How many of you find yourself waiting in line, or otherwise in some kind of queue or going through some process, standing there realizing not just how inefficient the process is, but how easy it would be to optimize it?
Really, this happens to me all the time. Dropping kids off at school and watching where and how the cars stop to let kids out. Waiting to get my kid off the bus from
Slower passengers? How would you know? (Score:2)
How would the airline know which passengers are slow?
Here's an idea; try being polite and helpful (Score:2)
Plenty of comments here (quite rightly) bitching about people being selfish on both boarding and disembarking; standing in the isles while they sort through their shit, something all the old hands have done way before, many times.
But...I often see these same "sky warriors" trampling and pushing past the old, infirm and mothers with children...
Guys, take 30 seconds to help these people board and stow their stuff; things go faster and you're being a good person instead of a dick.
Remember, the plane leaves whe
Use aircraft with better layout... (Score:2)
Two features make even the crappiest configured airport support faster boarding:
1. Twin aisles
2. An L2 door forward of the engine that is capable of boarding, and point the only jetway at it - first class people turn left and coach can board while first class pre-departure services go on without interference.
Want to see fast boarding? Find a United 767-400. They have a usable L2 door and two aisles, with a maximum of 7 across in coach (configured as 2-3-2). Meaning each square of aisle space is only need
Video (Score:3)
CGP Grey did a nice video [youtube.com] on this topic.
Re: What we do (Score:5, Interesting)
People like you are why we cant have nice things. If you're in row 25, and you have to put your bags in row 30, you might have to wait an extra 5 minutes to get off the plane, if that. By putting your bags in row 10 and forcing the people in row 10 to put their bags in row 30, you are adding a 10- 15 minute delay to them getting off, possibly causing them to miss a close connection.
But I guess clearly your time is more important than everyone else's.
Re: (Score:2)
That's all nice on paper, but the reality in airplane boarding is that nobody cares for whatever you say
To be fair: Most gate PA systems make it impossible to HEAR what they say in the first place. Add in some foreign language people and the first step to enforce ANY sensible system of boarding would be loud and clear announcements.
Re: (Score:2)