181–190 of 512 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> getting on/off with my family is not optional for me. Ryanair has now accustomed Europeans to travel separately from their family, so it wouldn't surprise me to see that requirement change if it drops the price.
So Ryanair will take care of my 5 year old while I fly? Sounds peaceful. Last flight she spent 2 hours trying to lay down in the middle of the aisle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
...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 find myself with a case of both sider-ism on this. One the one hand (the hand that really should win out), we should all be able to act as decent empathetic people with the instruction following capabilities of a 7 year old when the situation dictates. But on the ot…
I never understood this. What exactly would you have airlines do? They don’t operate on massive margins. Ticket prices are the lowest or nearly the lowest they have ever been. You should blame the cheapness of the general populace for encouraging the squeezing of every last penny in ticket prices that results in the explosion of the 28” legroom budget airline market. You’re not entitled to air travel. Don’t like the (lack of) space? Pay for business or first class where the airline actually makes a profit. In the meantime, you better damn well listen to the flight crew’s instructions.
A) Airlines benefit from having tiered costs for tickets because their ideal situation is having minimal costs but charging each customer what the customer is willing to pay.
B) But of course, reducing total load times reduces the time planes spend on the ground. This isn't just reducing travel time but also reducing the number of planes the airline needs to take N passengers to their destination. Obviously, airlines care about their own time-costs more than the passenger's time costs - why the airline briskly takes their passenger to some out of the way hub and then has the passenger wait five hours of their own time.
So between these factors you get a pretty complex problem. That thing is that when you get into such complexity, the best strategy can be nothing more than incremental, greedy optimization. IE, it's surprising complex "best approaches" aren't being tried here.
I would like to see the carry-on to go away. I understand the consequences would be quite harsh at first, but I do believe the airports and airlines would eventually figure out better ways to handle luggage and we would all be better for it.
I don't think there's a lot of room for improvement, let alone a dramatic increase of the volume of checked baggage.
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…
As someone who customarily boards early (due to fare class or airline status), I can tell you one solid reason, overhead bin space. If flight attendants would ensure folks put their bags on their row and the gate attendants ensured bags weren’t too large, this would be less an issue, but I routinely see folks fairly early in the boarding process putting their bags in rows in front of theirs, even though their row’s bin is empty or at least not full.
The worst example of this was my flight a few weeks ago. I was the first to board that flight, followed by another customer in first class and her family. The woman proceeded to put all her kid’s and husband’s luggage in the first class overhead despite her being the only one in that cabin (her seat was via an upgrade, not that it matters). The rest of the passengers in first class (besides me, thankfully) had to put their luggage in the first rows of economy due to her actions which had a ripple effect down the plane. Probably extended boarding and deboarding time by at least five minutes, all because of what I’d call selfish behavior.
If airlines really wanted to speed up boarding they should stop offering free carry on but charge for checked in luggage. Ryanair realized this now and for their cheapest category you aren’t allowed to put luggage in the overhead bins (or rather, the ticket allows only bags that fit under the seat in front). As for boarding, airlines should have staff in the plane shoving people into the rows with their coats on and…
I tripped while reading here. It reads to me like "stop offering free carry on COMMA but charge" of which I couldn't make sense. Suggestion, "stop offering free carry on, and charge..."
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…
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…
One of the problems is people who put their carry on luggage 4 or 5 rows down from their seat. This should just not be allowed, period.