Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 512 posts

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

#261

Post by tedunangst »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #127
cgriswald wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except this is not true. Quicksort is typically faster than mergesort, but worst case it can be very much slower. The worst case does not affect both algorithms the same way.

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

#262

Post by stale2002 »

mcbits wrote: post #247
stale2002 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> THEN you and your family should start Gettysburg ng 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.

Lol, autocorrect...

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

#263

Post by mfgs »

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 just wish people that had to wait 20 minutes for their checked in luggage to be unloaded would stay seated until others had exited.

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

#265

Post by henryfjordan »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #164
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.

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…

Southwest would have been my guess for the worst. Generally I see them using a 3seat-aisle-3seat configuration. The plane always fills up window and aisle seats from front to back, then only once people have explored the whole plane do they resort to a middle seat between two strangers. Everyone is basically incentivized to act as greedily as possible so it takes longer than it needs to.

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

#266

Post by kortilla »

r00fus wrote: post #128
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.

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.

No, you missed the point. Speeding up deplaning won’t help much because of all of the things happening below the passenger deck (unloading baggage, unloading packages, emptying sewage, etc.) and in the cockpit (debrief).

Getting passengers off quickly won’t help speed up the general post-flight process much. It’s very rare that the bottleneck is waiting for the cabin to be cleaned.

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

#267

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

asdff wrote: post #213
oarabbus_ wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the legroom is considerably lacking in economy class. But aside from that (a small price to pay for a trip that would otherwise take days to months, no?) what makes you call being on a flight being like "damn cattle"? >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.

I don't get the gripe with leg room, unless you are oddly shaped. I'm 6' and I don't care about leg room or leaning back, because in every flight you can just push your bag under your seat and stretch your legs fully under the seat ahead of you. I find a 5 hour flight more comfortable than 3 hour sporting event on an aluminum bleacher.

I am 6'5" and I feel that if I can fly without complaining about leg room, all you oompa loompas should be able to as well. ;)

I really feel for the folks 6'7" and over tho. I have just about an inch of slack when I sit down on a Delta flight, so I imagine beyond that would be pretty uncomfortable. Also, I resolved not to fly on Air Asia any more because they seem to leave a lot less room even than our Western LCC flights.

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

#268

Post by kmonsen »

lonelappde wrote: post #244
throwaheyy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unless you are in first class,. boarding early is worse -- it's more time on the plane

If you are in first class you can do whatever you want and the airline will politely thank you. At least this is my experience when flying business or first class.

In general, the airline lets you board at your time or later

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

#269

Post by kortilla »

bschwindHN wrote: post #249
frankus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Orrrr, hear me out, we just deal with people being a bit slow as just a part of life and remember that it's amazing we're able to fly at all.

Doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. A house with a leaky roof is amazing compared to no shelter, but it’s still a leaky roof.

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

#270

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

xvector wrote: post #242
lonelappde wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Take the Mad Max approach! Push them into the aisle! Give me speed or give me death!

   Give me speed, or 
   give them death!
FTFY

/s

Post reply on HN