341–350 of 512 posts
Southwest doesn't resemble that, heh.
I mentioned that to an Indonesian person (you know, where all the airliner accidents happen), and they puzzled over that for a minutes and said, "So ... like a bus?" :)
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Spirit Airlines actually has the right idea on this - you pay to bring an overhead bag aboard, and they mean business about it being the proper size. I'm able to get away with not checking a bag on the vast majority of my flights. I'm out of the airport like 5 minutes after I exit the plane.
Do you find that Spirit flights board and deplane faster? People struggling to get overhead bags when I'm feeling very cramped and just want to leave is one of my pet peeves.
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…
By contrast, boarding and deplaning is a particularly uncomfortable form of hurry-up-and-wait, where your mind isn't your own because you need to keep one eye/ear on your surroundings, and you're standing with your luggage and shuffling forward at random intervals.
It's no surprise that people don't consider time spent boarding/deplaning the same as time (eg) at the gate, and that obvious inefficiencies are particularly rankling.
I tried to paint a vivid picture of the differences, but the truth is I don't personally mind boarding/deplaning too much, for some reason. I just understand where the focus comes from.
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Think of it as first class seats giving the optionality to board at any time (not to mention those free drinks and snacks).
Also, because first class is smaller, you spend less time standing in the jetway and airplane aisle. 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…
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I fully agree that an airline seat is more comfortable than bleachers but how do you put your bag under your seat - there's almost always someone else's feet or bag there?
I think he means under the legs, which are outstretched under the seat in front. I do this and it works well.
In that scenario, I put the bag on the tray, bear hug it, and drop right off. Leaning forward into the bag works for me.
(Yes, I have a huggable bag, and I have one of those thin blankets I mooched from Delta years ago.)
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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.
>act as greedily as possible so it takes longer than it needs to These two things aren't connected (greed and time blocking alsie). the greedy answer is to get comfortable and settled in your bubble, fast. I am a SW FF, most of the other people on my planes are, and we get it...we move and seat quickly to allow others in. I'm guessing far better average plane etiquette than most other US airline's FFs (though all FFs…
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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.
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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.
Excluding children, for whom exceptions can be made, I'm not sure I understand why this is much of a problem. Does it really matter if you walk fifty feet without being next to your travel partner?
Now friends sometimes end up in different seats, and you can probably get away with waiting somewhere, maybe on the plane itself to meet up, but if everyone is in the same boat it might be chaos to do that, and there is more incentive for airport staff to stop you.
As a bigger guy, I scowl at people wanting to remove overhead bins. I'd rather put my bag there and have the space under the seat for my legs. Airlines need to understand the more uncomfortable they make the flights, the more likely I am to take a train.