Southwest has the lowest turnaround times in the industry, and they have essentially no load order (the A-B-C groups just determine who gets to pick seats first).
A Better Way to Load a Plane
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Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#12People like to stay in groups, splitting a group of friends or a family who are in the same aisle into seperate boarding parties is unlikely to work. Trying to find another article on the subject which showed not allocating seats and allowing a free for all was almost as effective as this tactic.
Exactly, my 4 year old isn't going to wait all by himself until it's his turn to get seated.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#13This won't work, because individuals have different incentives than the airline. The individual wants to board early so that there is plenty of space for his/her bag in the overhead bins, and also wants to board at the same time as family/friends. It's only the airline that wants the "efficient" boarding.
Now add this to the fact that zones are almost never enforced: regardless of what's on my boarding pass, I usually just go when they call "Zone 1" or Zone 2". They've always just let me through without a comment.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#14Imagine an airplane whose ceiling opened up to reveal a completely empty cabin. These planes could be parked underneath their gates at airports. At the gate itself would be the entire cabin (seats, overhead storage, etc.) as a complete unit which could be accessed by the passengers at any time before departure. At departure time, the floor of the gate opens, the cabin is lowered into the waiting plane and the ceiling of the plane closes.
That would be the fastest way to load a plane.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#15People like to stay in groups, splitting a group of friends or a family who are in the same aisle into seperate boarding parties is unlikely to work. Trying to find another article on the subject which showed not allocating seats and allowing a free for all was almost as effective as this tactic.
Exactly, my 4 year old isn't going to wait all by himself until it's his turn to get seated.
This was addressed in the article. It states "The outcome is fairly robust in the sense that it's relatively insensitive to deviations from it, say, because of couples or families being seated together." During ticket purchase, families could be noted as such and all given the lowest group number amongst them.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#16This is a perfect example of where a computer fails to interpret the intricacies of real life.
For reasons such as groups sitting together, too many divisions, etc.
Planes have rear and front doors. Why don't we start by just splitting people into front and back and filling in from the middle - assuming this really is an issue which needs to be solved.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#17In theory I guess it sounds good, but I don't see it working at all. This would create 18 seperate groups of passengers, and unless they're already in line in the right order, there's no way this would be faster. When they call your zone to board, it usually takes a few minutes for every person in taht zone just to get in line. Multiply that by 18 and there's no fucking way this saves any time.
Perhaps the 3 subsections they present is too many; imagine it with 2 subsections resulting in 12 groups. Using an organized line-up system like Southwest, you could reduce the ready-time. First, groups 1 and 2 would line up. Once the group 1 line is clear, group 3 would take its place, then group 2 would load. This would also reduce the number of people per lineup, something that in small terminals still plagues the Southwest system (with their 6 effective groups).
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#18In theory I guess it sounds good, but I don't see it working at all. This would create 18 seperate groups of passengers, and unless they're already in line in the right order, there's no way this would be faster. When they call your zone to board, it usually takes a few minutes for every person in taht zone just to get in line. Multiply that by 18 and there's no fucking way this saves any time.
At every airport I've ever been they are smart enough to call the next zone before the previous zone's line is half way done. And even when the line dwindles, the next zone people are all huddled around and ready to get on.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#19The problem with boarding planes is that people completely ignore when they're supposed to board and immediately line up as soon as boarding starts. I fly all the time and as soon as boarding starts for the last N rows more than half of the passengers line up, in a completely random fashion. It's as if people are unnerved by waiting while other people are boarding, even though everyone has a specific seat. People wou…
Luckily, people are easily trained by enforcing the rules. If airlines actually enforced zone rules, people would learn that it's easier to obey them than to chance the hangup they would cause by a failed attempt to cheat them.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, my 4 year old isn't going to wait all by himself until it's his turn to get seated.
This was addressed in the article. It states "The outcome is fairly robust in the sense that it's relatively insensitive to deviations from it, say, because of couples or families being seated together." During ticket purchase, families could be noted as such and all given the lowest group number amongst them.
Traveling Ryanair or other budget airlines, you get a "sequence number" which is the order in which you've checked in, theoretically this is also the order in which you board (seating is unassigned). But then you get there and they say "families traveling with children board first" and as this is an Irish airlines that's, umm, everyone but me. Which is understandable perhaps if people want to sit together, but hey, didn't I pay for my ticket too? So if you're going to have a free for all then do that, don't sneak in seating policies by the back door!