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Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

arstechnica.com

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Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#71

Post by leetcrew »

reaperducer wrote: post #55
leetcrew wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing this is because the airlines feel it's easier to enforce boarding procedures than deplaning. hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order, but once the plane has arrived at it's destination, people want to stand up and get off as soon as they get a chance.

hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order Really? I see this all the time. You can especially see it on airlines that have signs for group lines labeled 1-5 permanently displayed at the gate. As soon as the announcement goes out that the boarding process will begin shortly, a dozen people from Groups 4 and 5 will rush to their lines. I've never understood this. I just sit back and relax until th…

just my experience. I only fly Southwest, and as far as I can tell, people trying to board significantly out of order get scolded by the gate attendant and sent back to their place in line. swa is first-come first-served seating though, and they charge extra for low boarding pass numbers, so it might be a bigger deal to them.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#72

Post by stanferder »

paparush wrote: post #41

Boarding for the major US carriers is so broken. My solution - NO OVERHEAD BAGS - period.

Spirit Airlines actually has the right idea on this - you pay to bring an overhead bag aboard, and they mean business about it being the proper size. I'm able to get away with not checking a bag on the vast majority of my flights. I'm out of the airport like 5 minutes after I exit the plane.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#73

Post by ulfw »

ehnto wrote: post #57
StillBored wrote: post #18

The conclusions are pretty obvious, I guess they just needed to simulate it? The fastest boarding I've ever experienced was something Cathay Pacific did a few years ago. In the boarding area they had three lines with a bunch of section signs and an a couple employees hassling/sorting people between the lines. The rear of the plane sections were at the front of the line. I'm guessing they were just counting how many p…

I booked 4 flights with Cathay not sure what to expect, but it was a pretty good experience all round. Boarding was a non issue, fast and on time. Everything else was perfectly functional, if economical. The staff were excellent. I didn't appreciate the mid flight catalogue advertising for beauty products though. Talk about a captive audience. That only happened on the leg between Japan and HK, I hope it's not common…

Better than US airlines trying to sell credit cards mid-flight.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#74

Post by TomVDB »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #21
undefined1 wrote: post #4

CGP Grey has a great video examining different boarding methods and why some are slower or faster than others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo Also noting that the way we deplane (front to back) is the slowest method, heh.

Great video. This is one of those phenomena, like how to fix traffic jams, that everyone has an opinion on because of firsthand experience, but few people know about the actual research on. Despite there being known fast methods, I think 2 things stand in the way of implementing them: 1) Business and 1st class make a lot of money for airlines. Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why…

although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

The hustle and bustle at the gate stresses me out. (There's no good reason why and it shouldn't, but it does.) Once I'm sitting in my window seat, I close my eyes and relax.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#75

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

MereInterest wrote: post #54
cryptonector wrote: post #42

Airlines don't just sell the tickets. They sell convenience and comfort. And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. So they want premium customers to get dibs on overhead bin space, which means letting them board first. The slowest part of boarding sometimes is the tail (economy and late-arrivals) looking for bin space, or worse, having to bring their carry-on back to the do…

> And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. If only there were other places that luggage could be stored. Somewhere for larger bags that aren't needed during the flight. Somewhere that could be loaded independently of the passenger door. If such a place existed, airlines could give incentives to have passengers place baggage there instead of overhead. Or airlines could do t…

>charge extra for the less convenient method

Not having to wait for my bag when I get off the plane, and having 0 chance of losing the bag, is worth quite a bit. And by charging, they do reduce the number of people with them.

Source: The overheads on Spirit (which only allows a personal item) always have space, even on full flights.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#76

Post by ehnto »

dmurray wrote: post #13
GauntletWizard wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a RyanAir flight a few months back, and while there were many things to justify their reputation for being super-budget, one thing I did like was that they did boarding from both sides of the plane - They had a ramp at the rear exit as well as the front. It was one of the most convenient deplaning experiences I've had.

They do that all the time and it's not for passenger convenience: it's to shave minutes off the turnaround time and get more flights per day. They also almost never use an airbridge even in airports where that is standard. That's both for speed (Ryanair's guys on the ground can get the ramp there faster than the airport employees who drive the airbridge) and for cost savings, since airports charge for that service.

Honest question, are they skipping some other steps then? I wouldn't I expect deboarding and boarding to take longer than checks, fuel and cleaning.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#77

Post by komali2 »

reaperducer wrote: post #38
StillBored wrote: post #18

The conclusions are pretty obvious, I guess they just needed to simulate it? The fastest boarding I've ever experienced was something Cathay Pacific did a few years ago. In the boarding area they had three lines with a bunch of section signs and an a couple employees hassling/sorting people between the lines. The rear of the plane sections were at the front of the line. I'm guessing they were just counting how many p…

The fastest boarding I experienced was years ago somewhere in Asia (Singapore, maybe), where three lines boarded through three doors: Two on the terminal side, and one on the far side. I was in the far-side group, and we had to hike up a lot of stairs and then through a jetway, presumably over the aircraft (hard to know with no windows), and then down a bunch of stairs and then enter the aircraft, where we could see…

> put everything and the kitchen sink into over-sized carry-ons

Which they only do because free checked is going away. You get what you optimize for, after all.

IMO people pack way too much shit traveling anyway, but I'm sure here most are familiar with the onebag concept. I've no way to convince someone other than actually going on a trip with them and happily walking next to them while they drag their wheeled luggage around.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#78

Post by lostapathy »

xmodem wrote: post #14
snarf21 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I've always found deplaning fast except in the case of the person who's overhead is three rows back. There are ways to make it all faster but require some systemic changes to how we travel.

I wish airlines and airports would work at getting the checked bags off the damn plane faster. Whenever I check a bag I could have carried on, it feels like I'm being punished for it, as inevitably it comes out 1 minute after the every-30-minutes train departs.

Supposedly masking this is part of how some airports are designed. They make you walk farther than you'd strictly have to, so that there's more time for baggage to get to baggage claim while you're walking.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#79

Post by chrisgd »

I would think the only thing that really matters is time to stow carry one. Everyone has a carry on, then late groups are asked to check it but everyone wants to see with their own eyes that there is no space or people put their roller in flat, when it clearly states to turn it on its side in newer planes with drop down overhead space.

Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

#80

Post by lostapathy »

leetcrew wrote: post #71
reaperducer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order Really? I see this all the time. You can especially see it on airlines that have signs for group lines labeled 1-5 permanently displayed at the gate. As soon as the announcement goes out that the boarding process will begin shortly, a dozen people from Groups 4 and 5 will rush to their lines. I've never understood this. I just sit back and relax until th…

just my experience. I only fly Southwest, and as far as I can tell, people trying to board significantly out of order get scolded by the gate attendant and sent back to their place in line. swa is first-come first-served seating though, and they charge extra for low boarding pass numbers, so it might be a bigger deal to them.

Which airport? I've never seen a southwest gate attendant do this, or reject oversized carry on bags. It's really frustrating.
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