Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by reportgunner » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:22 AM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #98

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 was on a flight a year or two ago where, upon landing, a woman turned her phone on and received a call informing her that her brother had passed away. She was understandably quite distraught as we taxied to the gate, and the lead flight attendant even made an announcement asking everyone to please remain seated so that she could exit the plane first. Nobody listened.

How could the passengers have known which woman is the one they should let pass ?

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

#412

Post by Freak_NL » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

starfallg wrote: post #405

twojacobtwo wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, as I have heard from multiple friends who have chosen not to or can't have children(due to ethical concerns or lack of money), they understand completely and expect that parents take responsibility for the commitments they made without pushing the problems onto everyone else.

>without pushing the problems onto everyone else. Or as others call it - "common courtesy" I don't have children but I can understand that parenting is stressful enough as it is. Why go about making it worse for them?

Not to mention that having children sits at the very base of human existence. We built societies around the plain fact that children are necessary. Only those who believe that humanity should just go extinct can argue that having children is just a personal choice.

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

#413

Post by reportgunner » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:25 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #332

kortilla wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that valuable ? Would you pay double to deplane 5 minutes sooner ?

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

#414

Post by mapgrep » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:30 AM UTC

simonskoog wrote: post #408

disbshdns wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not babies. They just don’t get it. The totality of the commitment is lost on them. What’s new is that they also just don’t care.

I'm not so sure about that. Two thoughts: The main reason me and my SO don't have kids is a deep concern about there not being any sure way to absolutely guarantee that a new person brought to this world will live a happy and fulfilling life and that the ethical thing to do is to when able (SO finishing education) adopt a child in need to improve their lives. This of course means that I'm currently pretty sure that m…

>it's just that it aligns with a value we share to not, ever, be a problem for other people

It’s a bit late for that; you’ve already gone through infanthood, toddlerhood, and childhood and benefitted from the patience and generosity of more strangers than you will ever know. Now you imply that perhaps parents and their children should try to not affect others negatively. I think by and large they do, but to the extent they do affect others this way, you owe some debt of patience, and are you so sure it’s paid off?

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

#415

Post by maccard » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #274

rootusrootus wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is mindblowing. Even on an A380 that was only boarding through a single door I've never experienced an hour on the ground in the plane before pushing back. That would be super annoying.

It sounds like you just normally board well into the boarding process. The standard for many domestic flights is to start 40 mins prior to departure. International is 1hr+.

In the US. I fly Ryanair fairly regularly, and European flights are fully boarded within 20 minutes often.

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

#416

Post by Freak_NL » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

shpongled wrote: post #253

londons_explore wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair has pretty much given up enforcing seat allocations. Sure, your boarding pass might say one seat number, but it's pretty much a "sit in any free seat" policy. 90% of the time when i get on the plane someone else is in my seat, so I'm forced to sit in a random seat, giving someone else the exact same issue. The staff know that getting everyone back into the correct seats will take a massive effort, so don't bo…

You tell the person to get out of the seat you paid for. I strongly prefer aisle seats. I once had a girl ask me to switch seats with her so that she could sit next to her boyfriend. Since she had a middle seat, I politely declined, explaining that I would only switch with another aisle seat. She proceeded to throw a fit, calling me an asshole, etc, etc. I paid extra (how have we even come to this?) to be able to pic…

At some point you will either have to escalate or give up. Some people won't be convinced, and can't be badgered into obeying you, and they know that you have no recourse at all as long as they remain seated and ignore you.

If the local authority (flight attendants) won't back you up, you are at the discretion of whoever is hogging your seat. Any display of power over the other usually amounts to potentially being able to resort to violence if necessary to back up your power. The person in the seat know full well that you cannot do that without being forced to leave the plane, so they have effectively nothing to fear from you.

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

#417

Post by lawlorino » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #404

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 don't need to get off the plane 1-3 minutes earlier. In fact I doubt it would even add up to that. The spread between the first passengers off and the last, non doddling passenger is rarely that long. Families, friends, couples are not going to go for your rule that one of them should get off first and the other should wait for the entire rest of column to leave. How about just trying to be more patient? Find som…

Agreed, but this is HN so of course we need to endlessly argue and overengineer things in order to arrive at the most theoretically optimal solution which completely ignores practical issues.

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

#418

Post by d4rti » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #191

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…

The whole aisle fills up pretty immediately upon the Fasten Seatbelt sign becoming unilluminated. As soon as this happens, there's no other option except the row-by-row method, like when a stoplight turns green on a bunch of waiting cars.

On the majority of flights I take, at least 15-25% of passengers remove their seatbelts and take their bags (or try) before the light is switched off.

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

#419

Post by Drakar1903 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #404

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 don't need to get off the plane 1-3 minutes earlier. In fact I doubt it would even add up to that. The spread between the first passengers off and the last, non doddling passenger is rarely that long. Families, friends, couples are not going to go for your rule that one of them should get off first and the other should wait for the entire rest of column to leave. How about just trying to be more patient? Find som…

Multiply that 3 minutes by however many passengers are on the plane and you're saving days of human existence.

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

#420

Post by Drakar1903 » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

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…

If you only have a front door exit, then column-by-column would work for the first column, but then it would switch to row-by-row starting from the back, since the column moves forward, and that allows the last row people to join the end of the column first.

If you have front and back door exits, the same would happen, but row-by-row would start from the middle of the plane.