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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

#141

Post by frankus »

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…

Idle thought I had a while back: Let people who don't have anything in the overhead bins get off first.

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

#142

Post by grimjack00 »

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…

> 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.

If you're boarding in a late group, overhead space will likely be at a premium, so you want the best chance to claim that space and not have to gate check.

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

#143

Post by cogman10 »

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 is where being a jerk would be beneficial for everyone. Simply put, the person at the front of the line should basically just ignore everyone and move forward. People aggressively jumping in gaps would even be OK because it would give people in the back time to grab their stuff and get organized.

Being polite is what ends up slowing everyone down. (the same is not true for boarding. Back to front outside columns to inside columns would be far faster)

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

#144

Post by benhurmarcel »

plussed_reader wrote: post #83
reaperducer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reminds me of loading onto a Ryanair flight in Edinburgh; the labyrinth walk to the door that put you onto the tarmac a short walk from the stairs. Loaded back to front, and since there are no assigned seats on Ryanair it's just like getting on the (air)bus.

Not only there are assigned seats on Ryanair (since years at least), but you have to pay to select one and they purposely place groups/families separately to make them choose to pay extra.

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

#145

Post by cogman10 »

frankus wrote: post #141
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…

Idle thought I had a while back: Let people who don't have anything in the overhead bins get off first.

People without stuff should sit next to the aisle. (and get on last)

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

#146

Post by benhurmarcel »

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…

Ryanair solved that problem by charging for having a carry-on. They only sell the space they have.

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

#148

Post by benhurmarcel »

adwww wrote: post #135
russdill wrote: post #2

There's a lot of focus on improving boarding times. But I haven't seen any attempts to improve deplaning. It's always via the slowest possible method.

Boarding can't normally happen while the plane is being refuelled, which means passengers boarding the plane is the last thing that happens before the plane is ready to take off. That means the faster they can board passengers, the sooner the plane can get in the air. For deplaning it's not so urgent for the airlines to speed it up, as once the plane has been disenbarked there is still 40+ minutes of refuelling, clea…

> Boarding can't normally happen while the plane is being refuelled

It is possible, but with more rules and restrictions.

https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Refuelling_with_Passenge...

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/31197/is-it-nor...

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

#149

Post by benhurmarcel »

StillBored wrote: post #33
munk-a wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they would reverse the trend of making checking luggage so damn expensive - once upon a time people most people didn't have wheely bags and it was much less unpleasant to board a plane. Now a-days a lot of travelers will try and cram their entire luggage into a single wheely bag that they struggle to lift into the overhead bin.

Which slows down the boarding process, if anything they should be charging more for carry on board vs checked, it slows security too.

> if anything they should be charging more for carry on board vs checked

Ryanair does that now.

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

#150

Post by novok »

wtvanhest wrote: post #30
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…

One option that isnt discussed is having the overhead bins be seperately ticketed and a box. So if you want a bin, you pay $40 and one gets asigned to you. It would streamline boarding because people would put their stuff in the bin and be done.

Overhead bins tend to be under provisioned for the amount of passengers boarding.
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