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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

#231

Post by lonelappde »

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.

The main factor in reboarding slowness is not how tightly people pack into line, it's when one person gets into the aisle and stops and blocks everyone

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

#232

Post by ganoushoreilly »

kyllo wrote: post #230

This reminds me of the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt. It's fictional, but there's a story about a boy scout troop that goes on a hike, and there's an overweight kid named Herbie who hikes the slowest. The troop leader teaches everyone that the entire group as a whole will reach the top faster (and stay together) if they keep Herbie in the front. When you have a bottleneck step in your process, the whole end-to-end pr…

In the military on rucks, they often follow this tactic too. Granted I'd imagine you don't want to be the slow one.

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

#233

Post by lonelappde »

fiblye wrote: post #126
ftio wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Angry looks don't slow the line.

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

#234

Post by davinic »

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…

Think of it as first class seats giving the optionality to board at any time (not to mention those free drinks and snacks).

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

#235

Post by bsder »

whiddershins wrote: post #130

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 yo…

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

The problem is if you have a connection--then 20 minutes matters.

Often you get stuck behind someone who can't lift or move their too heavy carryon but doesn't care because they're at terminus.

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

#236

Post by mehrdadn »

xmprt wrote: post #228
TallGuyShort wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a documentary on Netflix, I think it's called "Speed" or something because it's about fast stuff, had an episode about doing Monte Carlo simulations of plane embark / disembark sequences that were optimal. They came up with optimal boarding processes but it required individual seat assignments which was a problem for kids (not to mention a ton of explaining). I forget if Southwest's semi-randomized approach w…

I think you (and others in this thread) will enjoy CGP Grey's video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

I've watched that video many times. I love the video (it's excellent and hilarious), but I should mention there's one aspect of it that rubs me the wrong way. The part he says back-to-front sucks and then shows a guy on the 3rd-to-last row trying to fit in his carry-on (around like 1:04) is a somewhat disingenuous representation of what people assume the optimal solution would be. You'd think they would put a last-row window-seater first, then second-to-last row, etc., not just randomly start at row 3 aisle -- nobody ever suggests that's optimal. That's a misrepresentative strawman of the algorithm people imagine, and it's hardly surprising that it sucks.

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

#237

Post by Domenic_S »

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

Carry-on space. I have yet to see a truly full flight where at least some carry ons aren't gate-checked.

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

#238

Post by adrianmonk »

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…

> Business and 1st class make a lot of money for airlines. Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable) would devalue their tickets and make less profit for the airline.

Seems like you can model this as equivalent to boarding two airplanes. Boarding first class is like boarding one airplane, and when you're done with that you start the clock ticking on boarding coach, which is like the second airplane.

In which case, you have two airplane-boarding sub-problems, and the number you care about is the sum of the times. You can apply whatever strategy to both subproblems, then you can reduce both numbers that you're adding, and you still get a smaller sum.

Maybe it's not as much of an efficiency gain as doing away with the first class and coach separation, but it should still be an efficiency gain.

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

#239

Post by xvector »

birdyrooster wrote: post #205
laumars wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you can even split the family up. Plenty of people travel with younger kids (5 and under) and there's no way in hell that can be done safely without having the parents with them.

Maybe exceptions can be made for children?

The fastest solution is having families with children exit last. If someone wants to exit together they can do so after everyone else is gone.

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

#240

Post by donarb »

mcmoose75 wrote: post #19
majormajor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why boarding first is desirable, except for scarcity of overhead luggage space (heightened by checked bag fees and growing rollaboard bags) and those few first class folks getting a free drink while they wait. Fix the storage issue and I'd want to board last - don't extend my time in those seats!

Overhead bin space is the big reason- give the somewhat (last 5 years-ish) changes to charging for the 1st checked bag, many who would have otherwise checked a bag are bringing on as carry-ons. Many flights I've been on in past several years have had a real shortage of bin space, meaning getting on board early to make sure you're not the odd man out IS important (waiting for baggage carousel can take an extra 45 minu…

> waiting for baggage carousel can take an extra 45 minutes

A few years ago, Houston airport authorities dealt with complaints that it took too long for travelers to get their bags after their flights. When the airport was built, the bag pickup locations were very close to the arriving gates, over time the airport got busier and people ended up waiting longer.

The fix was to move the pickup locations further from the arrival gates. This didn't change the length of time that it took to pull the bags from the plane and send them to the pickup location, but passengers noticed that their bags always showed up within minutes of getting to the pickup area. They essentially eliminated the waiting time by converting it into walking time.

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