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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

#331

Post by wutbrodo »

notduncansmith wrote: post #276
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…

You can’t have constant movement, it has to come in waves because no-one wants to get up out of their seat as giant carry-ons are unloaded from above. My 2-bit idea is that we let passengers with no overhead luggage board and exit first. Let those who want to move at glacial speed do so, without slowing everyone else down.

As someone who hasn't checked a bag for a decade, this seems fair. I save a TON of time and hassle not checking luggage, and it seems only fair that those who do check luggage not be held up further by my choice.

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

#332

Post by im3w1l »

kortilla wrote: post #266
r00fus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wont help who much? Maybe as you say throughput wouldn't increase because other things need to happen anyway. But passenger latency would improve and that's valuable.

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

#333

Post by wutbrodo »

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.

This sounds like some sort of patient wisdom until you realize that there's no actual upside to your seeming preference of doing things less efficiently. Appreciating the ability to fly across the world isn't exclusive of being able to improve the experience when there are easy ways to do so with few, if any, downsides.

By your logic, why not add an additional mandatory thirty minute waiting period to deplane? After all, it's amazing that we can fly.

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

#334

Post by matthewowen »

United857 wrote: post #112
dunmalg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Business/1st class passengers (at least on international flights) almost always have access to lounges, rather than waiting in the gate area. As good as the plane seats are, I'd still rather spend as much lounge time as possible.

Ok, but on domestic they generally don't.

Also, most lounges really aren't very good. AmEx centurion lounge is nice. But like, the United lounge in your average airport is really a few steps down from your typical airport bar.

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

#335

Post by wutbrodo »

bschwindHN wrote: post #248
mjevans wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good luck using your math on humans, I'm sure they'll all understand.

Without commenting on the wisdom of the plan above: what in earth are you talking about? You don't just announce the equation and say good luck. You'd announce each row or range of rows in order, the same way you do for boarding (or in boarding's case, as encapsulated by boarding groups).

The real issue would be compliance, not comprehension.

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

#336

Post by wutbrodo »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #84
komali2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put everything and the kitchen sink into over-sized carry-ons Which they only do because free checked is going away. You get what you optimize for, after all. IMO people pack way too much shit traveling anyway, but I'm sure here most are familiar with the onebag concept. I've no way to convince someone other than actually going on a trip with them and happily walking next to them while they drag their wheeled lugga…

> Which they only do because free checked is going away. I pack everything in one piece of carry-on luggage, and I'd do that even if checked luggage were free (which it often is). It means I don't have to take extra time or wait in a line to check a bag at the source airport, I don't have to take time at baggage claim at the destination airport (just walk straight from the gate to ground transportation), and I don't…

Yup, I haven't checked a bag in a decade and have been consistently baffled by my friends that do; this decade was roughly my 20s, so it excludes a lot of the good reasons for checked bags like physical limitations or young children). Who wants to deal with checkin lines upon boarding (and get to the airport that much earlier), then get off of an international flight and wait an arbitrarily long time for your bags, with an unreasonably high chance of them having been lost?

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

#337

Post by cortesoft »

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 feel sorry for the person who has to wait with my two year old after I get off.

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

#338

Post by cortesoft »

wutbrodo wrote: post #331
notduncansmith wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t have constant movement, it has to come in waves because no-one wants to get up out of their seat as giant carry-ons are unloaded from above. My 2-bit idea is that we let passengers with no overhead luggage board and exit first. Let those who want to move at glacial speed do so, without slowing everyone else down.

As someone who hasn't checked a bag for a decade, this seems fair. I save a TON of time and hassle not checking luggage, and it seems only fair that those who do check luggage not be held up further by my choice.

Except the people who checked luggage are going to end up waiting at the luggage pick up anyway.

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

#339

Post by joegahona »

kortilla wrote: post #271
JshWright wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally it's one carry-on and one "personal item".

Yeah, and the personal item is supposed to go under the seat in front of you.

Often the "personal item" is another suitcase. If given the position of power, I would decree that if your carry-on or personal item has wheels on it, it's not a carry on and must be checked.

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

#340

Post by cortesoft »

billatq wrote: post #300
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…

Personally, I’d like to be able to exit from multiple sides of the plane. Getting people to be orderly is hard, but at least you can half it.

I used to always fly southwest out of Burbank, and they exit from the front and back. I would always board late and go to the back, and be the first one out. I got pissed when they started telling people during boarding about how they exit at our destination, and more people sat in back.
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