241–250 of 512 posts
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…
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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
How about everyone deposits their carry on bags on carts in the gate waiting area, of the exact dimensions at the overhead bins. Then workers transfer them to the overhead compartments while cleaning crew is working. Finally everyone takes their seats without fuss.
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If you are the airline it seems to work out since you are actually turning this into a money making opportunity? The real issue is if the slow boarding is costing the airline more than the money than they earn from charging from upgrades. Also consider that the people paying for expensive seats might be sad if they don't get to board early which again might affect airline revenue. I think airlines is pretty happy wit…
The thing is, people are not paying extra just to board early, they're mostly paying for the bigger seat, more space, more personal service. The "priority boarding" is just icing on the cake, a "cable channels package" tactic thrown in to make the customer feel like they're not getting ripped off as much. Assuming that boarding is not in the critical path, airlines could adopt a faster boarding system and get the pla…
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.
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…
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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).
Part of the annoyance of boarding isn't just the total time it takes from when they open the gate door until when it's done. It's the amount of standing up, holding your luggage, shuffling forward a bit, and wondering when the person in front of you will move.
Use driving as an analogy. Suppose you get out of a doctor's appointment at 3pm and are meeting someone to see a movie at 6pm. During those 3 hours, the only two activities you can do are kill time on your phone (either lingering in the doctor's office lobby or sitting in the movie theater lobby) and drive. Do you leave at 3pm and avoid rush hour, or do you wait until the last minute and get in traffic? Either way, you're going to wait 3 hours, so you're not saving time, but one is less stressful.
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.
> but getting on/off with my family is not optional for me. For sure. But there is a solution to this. The solution is that you and your family should stay seated, and wait a bit, for people behind you to leave. And then once there is a big enough empty space, THEN you and your family should start getting ready to leave.
Not sure if this is a pun I didn't understand or the most ridiculous autocorrection I've seen in a while.
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…
Take the seat-width served by an isle (if there's only one it's the plane width), round up. This is the 'sparring'. Disembark all of First class first, as it will have a different sparring and they paid more. For the remaining rows start with modulus = 0, then 1, then up to (sparring) N - 1. Dequeue those rows in parallel in N waves.
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.
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…
Also, people like to sit next to people they know such as family. A column approach sounds more effective, but it would split up people traveling together.