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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

#121

Post by jbigelow76 »

jaywalk wrote: post #98
scott_s wrote: post #81

I'm also convinced that we exit the plane in the worst way possible. We basically do it row-by-row: as the people in front of them leave, people in a row get up, get their bags, start walking down the line, and this cascades up the plane. The problem is that there is very little parallelism: while people in the next row to leave are getting their bags, no one is exiting the plane. This is similar to a stall in a proc…

I was on a flight a year or two ago where, upon landing, a woman turned her phone on and received a call informing her that her brother had passed away. She was understandably quite distraught as we taxied to the gate, and the lead flight attendant even made an announcement asking everyone to please remain seated so that she could exit the plane first. Nobody listened.

...the lead flight attendant even made an announcement asking everyone to please remain seated so that she could exit the plane first.

Nobody listened.

I find myself with a case of both sider-ism on this. One the one hand (the hand that really should win out), we should all be able to act as decent empathetic people with the instruction following capabilities of a 7 year old when the situation dictates. But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

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

#122

Post by nordsieck »

scott_s wrote: post #117
pacetherace wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deplaning is not a very significant problem because there are other things that are being taken care of while it is happening. However, you can't start boarding until a certain point and from there until the plane leaves the gate, a lot of resources are locked.

It's not a significant problem for the airline . But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

> It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

Sure, but to airlines, that's a revenue opportunity, not a problem.

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

#123

Post by chrisco255 »

It would be nice if they could also allow people to board and depart from the front and back doors of the plane. I've done this from the tarmac on a Frontier flight once in the South Terminal in Austin, and since you walk out on the tarmac old-school style, they have two ramps for onloading and offloading. Makes things much quicker. I don't know if the jet bridges could be extended to allow for front and back door access, but it would be awesome if it were possible.

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

#124

Post by barrkel »

dunmalg wrote: post #107
virtuous_signal wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I've always wondered why this is desirable Others have noted other reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that 1st/business class seats are more comfortable than the crappy crowded boarding area. Economy seats, it's the other way around. And as an added bonus, on something like a 787 where the boarding doors are behind business class, boarding first means you're lounging around in the front of the plane being se…

To be clear, 1st class is about 10x to 35x more expensive than economy for a transatlantic flight (I wouldn't bother with upgrading on any flight I couldn't catch some sleep on).

(BA: ~£200 Economy for LHR-JFK, £2300 to £7300 depending on day 1st Class)

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

#125

Post by setr »

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.

Every sales person I've met knows never to check-in luggage, because it can range anywhere from 15 min to hours before you get bag back. It's just totally unreliable. A distribution of course, probably hanging closer to 15-30 min, but do enough flights and you'll always get bit by that tail..

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

#126

Post by fiblye »

ftio wrote: post #93
scott_s wrote: post #81

I'm also convinced that we exit the plane in the worst way possible. We basically do it row-by-row: as the people in front of them leave, people in a row get up, get their bags, start walking down the line, and this cascades up the plane. The problem is that there is very little parallelism: while people in the next row to leave are getting their bags, no one is exiting the plane. This is similar to a stall in a proc…

This sounds like it might be faster, and I might like it for solo business trips, but getting on/off with my family is not optional for me. Assuming most multi-passenger groups feel similarly, and assuming solo business passengers represent only ~40% of the population, the impact of such a system (which would require substantially more passenger discipline/planning) would be pretty limited.

Yeah, with this idea, people would just clog up right outside the airplane door waiting for their family. Anyone trying to get through would get some angry looks for daring to push through.

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

#127

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

cgriswald wrote: post #91
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly, his plane boarding simulation falls down as soon as someone shows up late, or in a wheelchair, or with a bum leg, drunk, a baby, luggage that the wheel has fallen off of, etc... All of these things occur in non-ideal boarding scenarios as well. I don't see how they affect his solution more so than what we currently have.

It’s sort of like comparing two algorithms and using the one that has the simplest best case time complexity without considering the average case or that your particular real-world use might actually be a worst case.

But ultimately the same problems affect both algorithms in the same way. So the best case algorithm will be slower in the real world, but should still be faster than the other cases.

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

#128

Post by r00fus »

pacetherace wrote: post #111
scott_s wrote: post #81

I'm also convinced that we exit the plane in the worst way possible. We basically do it row-by-row: as the people in front of them leave, people in a row get up, get their bags, start walking down the line, and this cascades up the plane. The problem is that there is very little parallelism: while people in the next row to leave are getting their bags, no one is exiting the plane. This is similar to a stall in a proc…

Deplaning is not a very significant problem because there are other things that are being taken care of while it is happening. However, you can't start boarding until a certain point and from there until the plane leaves the gate, a lot of resources are locked.

You are thinking of a single flight as disconnected from the entire ecosystem - in reality, the gate is occupied, the next flight can't board, cleanup can't take place and probably a half dozen other things I can't think up. And costs go up dramatically if things are already behind.

I'd say deplaning quickly is about as important as boarding.

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

#129

Post by r00fus »

nordsieck wrote: post #122
scott_s wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a significant problem for the airline . But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

> It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating. Sure, but to airlines, that's a revenue opportunity, not a problem.

If deplaning could be 5% faster without any impact to other factors, it'd be done immediately by all airlines.

Just consider the knock-on effects in terms of flight on-time % for subsequent legs on a multi-leg flight.

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

#130

Post by whiddershins »

You know what I think is weird about all this discussion?

Boarding and deplaning really don’t take that long, most of the time.

Think 15 or 20 minutes max.

It’s one of those things where it feels incredibly long and arduous. It feels interminable. But that has something (IMO) more to do with the psychological experience of flying.

The actual time cost is fairly small, especially compared to so many other wastes of your time when flying (getting to the airport on crowded roads, requirements to arrive early, arriving early because of fear of security taking a long time, getting through security, requirements to get to the gate early, sitting in the plane at the gate, sitting on the plane waiting to take off, sitting on the plane on the other end, possibly being on a shuttle bus connecting plane to gate, waiting for luggage, waiting for cab or shuttle or rental car ...) not to mention the time of the actual flight.

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