I imagine in the future people will seat in the airport at waiting seats platform and that platform will be inserted in the airplane like a cartridge.
Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
281–290 of 512 posts
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#282Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#283The real problem is the carry on. Checked bags should be free. A carry on bigger than a small backpack should be expensive.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get the gripe with leg room, unless you are oddly shaped. I'm 6' and I don't care about leg room or leaning back, because in every flight you can just push your bag under your seat and stretch your legs fully under the seat ahead of you. I find a 5 hour flight more comfortable than 3 hour sporting event on an aluminum bleacher.
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.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ryanair sadly don't do unaccompanied minors, but for an airline that does (and 5 seems to be the lower bound), and if flying with a partner, I've always wondered if the following would work: Parent A flies without child on Day 1; Child is given to airline by Parent B on Day 2 and retrieved on the other end by Parent A. Parent B flies without child on Day 3.
And this is why your kid won't speak to you after age 18.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#286Airlines don't just sell the tickets. They sell convenience and comfort. And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. So they want premium customers to get dibs on overhead bin space, which means letting them board first. The slowest part of boarding sometimes is the tail (economy and late-arrivals) looking for bin space, or worse, having to bring their carry-on back to the do…
> And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. If only there were other places that luggage could be stored. Somewhere for larger bags that aren't needed during the flight. Somewhere that could be loaded independently of the passenger door. If such a place existed, airlines could give incentives to have passengers place baggage there instead of overhead. Or airlines could do t…
I'm a frequent flyer. I'll pay extra for carry-on space if need be (and I do, every time, even when flying airlines where I have no frequent flyer status). Checking luggage for me means: risking loss/theft, spending extra time (money) checking it and then waiting for it at the carousel. I often fly with two laptops and I don't want to make my backpack too heavy, but also I don't want to check either laptop.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#287Earlier 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.
A couple of times on Air Canada the attendants asked everybody to let those with close connections leave first, and people listened. I suppose there might have been a couple of jerks who ignored the announcement but nobody could tell. I think that's the difference. Once one person behaves poorly, others interpret that as permission to also be a jerk so it's "fair".
It worked because it was Air Canada.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#288The real problem is the carry on. Checked bags should be free. A carry on bigger than a small backpack should be expensive.
I'd like to enforce a rule that if it has wheels then you obviously can't carry it and it's not a carry on.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are thinking of a single flight as disconnected from the entire ecosystem - in reality, the gate is occupied, the next flight can't board, cleanup can't take place and probably a half dozen other things I can't think up. And costs go up dramatically if things are already behind. I'd say deplaning quickly is about as important as boarding.
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.
Some of the deplaners hold up the next flight they need to board. Airlines could optimize that.
Re: Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds
#290Airlines don't just sell the tickets. They sell convenience and comfort. And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. So they want premium customers to get dibs on overhead bin space, which means letting them board first. The slowest part of boarding sometimes is the tail (economy and late-arrivals) looking for bin space, or worse, having to bring their carry-on back to the do…
It's really odd to me that airlines decided to charge for checked bags rather than overhead bin storage. Even before it was common to charge for checked bags, almost everyone I've ever met preferred carry-ons whenever possible. And when they "enforce" carry-on bag size limits, the worst thing they'll do is gate-check your bag for free, which is still much better than checking a bag and having to wait there half an ho…
I agree! The airlines would do better to offer free checking for one bag and charge a fee for carry-on (and not oversell carry-on space). Then they could shave off a minimum of 5 minutes for boarding, and maybe much more (10 minutes? 15?). Saving 10 minutes in boarding time may mean one more flight/day for some routes.