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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

#101

Post by lostlogin »

jacquesm wrote: post #70
ehnto wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I booked 4 flights with Cathay not sure what to expect, but it was a pretty good experience all round. Boarding was a non issue, fast and on time. Everything else was perfectly functional, if economical. The staff were excellent. I didn't appreciate the mid flight catalogue advertising for beauty products though. Talk about a captive audience. That only happened on the leg between Japan and HK, I hope it's not common…

AirBaltic did this until very recently in the most annoying fashion. I wrote them a nastygram about it and I suspect many other people did so too because the last two flights I was on were pleasantly quiet. Whichever junior marketeer came up with that campaign should be forced to listen to their own work product for a day or two in succession. I'm sure that would get them to change careers.

> Whichever junior marketeer came up with that campaign should be forced to listen to their own work product for a day or two

I’d be willing to wager quite a lot that the marketing genius who wanted that was not junior.

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

#103

Post by jlg23 »

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 only time I witnessed passengers staying sit was after an announcement that said: "we know by experience that our pilots are much better at flying than at driving, so for your own safety, please keep seated until the 'fasten seatbelts' lights are turned off."

There is no (legal) way to make the passengers disembark orderly...

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

#104

Post by amalcon »

komali2 wrote: post #77
reaperducer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fastest boarding I experienced was years ago somewhere in Asia (Singapore, maybe), where three lines boarded through three doors: Two on the terminal side, and one on the far side. I was in the far-side group, and we had to hike up a lot of stairs and then through a jetway, presumably over the aircraft (hard to know with no windows), and then down a bunch of stairs and then enter the aircraft, where we could see…

> 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.

They also do it to avoid the scenario where your bag simply ends up on the wrong plane. It's unlikely these days because of technology, but it's hard to shake the worry once this has happened to you three or four times.

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

#105

Post by maxerickson »

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…

My experience has been that people exiting a plane could give a shit about fairness.

It's a traffic jam where those closest to the door get there first, not anything ordered.

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

#107

Post by dunmalg »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #21
undefined1 wrote: post #4

CGP Grey has a great video examining different boarding methods and why some are slower or faster than others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo Also noting that the way we deplane (front to back) is the slowest method, heh.

Great video. This is one of those phenomena, like how to fix traffic jams, that everyone has an opinion on because of firsthand experience, but few people know about the actual research on. Despite there being known fast methods, I think 2 things stand in the way of implementing them: 1) Business and 1st class make a lot of money for airlines. Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why…

>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 served drinks and addressed by name while behind you the rabble are are being herded like cattle into their tiny seats at the back.

For 3x the price, 1st/business class want luxury, and sitting elbow to elbow with the riffraff in beat up terminal seating isn't that.

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

#108

Post by eitland »

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.

I witnessed what seemed like a severe case of hypoglycemia in a passenger a few rows from me while stuck in a plane.

The idea that someone might die because people cannot just listen is somewhat scary.

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

#109

Post by njarboe »

reaperducer wrote: post #52
wtvanhest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One option that isnt discussed is having the overhead bins be seperately ticketed and a box. So if you want a bin, you pay $40 and one gets asigned to you. It would streamline boarding because people would put their stuff in the bin and be done.

Until they don't, and then the air hostesses who are just trying to get everyone seated have to become policemen as well. They have enough to do.

Not really any different than having assigned seats for people.

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

#110

Post by jedberg »

Southwest has sort of figured this out. First of all, they use random boarding, which is almost the fastest, and the fastest of the viable options (good luck getting people to board alternate rows).

They also interleave slow and fast passengers. They let handicapped people board, then the first 1/3 of passengers, then families with kids, and then the rest of the passengers.

By the last 1/3 of the passengers, it's mostly center seats, which means high parallelism for those passengers.

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