Might work for strictly business-folk serving lines? If groups still sit next to each other anyway, they can deal with the wait I think.
A Better Way to Load a Plane
31–40 of 60 posts
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#32In 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.
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Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#33In 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.
I could see this working very well for Southwest, though, for instance, as they already have everyone pre-line up not only by lettered zones, but also in groups of five within those zones (eg "B 15-20") at most every Southwest gate they service. Instead of milling around the gate in the 15 minutes before boarding, they get everyone where they're supposed to go, and then funnel them through the door single file, in or…
I'm not sure this would work very well with Southwest because they don't assign seat numbers to passengers (at least in my experience). Most of the time, the people at the front of the group choose seats toward the front of the plane and hold up everyone else while they're stowing their bag.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#34This is pointless, because boarding time does not waste any time. When a plane lands, it has to stay in the airport for quite a bit of time in most cases - even if you made boarding more efficient, you would not save any time. Refueling, getting in the right take off slot take longer than boarding the plane. And the question is - does this method feel better to the passengers getting on? I don't know, but I kinda dou…
I don't think the time taken for refueling, etc is the limiting factor. There are a couple sequences of events that need to happen (simultaneously) to get the plane ready to leave.
Sequence 1: allow arriving passengers to deplane, then clean the plane, board new passengers
Sequence 2: Refueling, other maintenance
Sequence 3: load checked baggage
The time taken to ready the plane is the maximum of the times for the 3 sequences above. It seems refueling takes less than 30 minutes (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20061018151916AAMkss8), and I'd guess the checked luggage can be loaded within 30 minutes as well.
I'm inclined to believe that deplaning, then cleaning, then boarding new passengers takes longer than 30 minutes, and boarding passengers IS indeed a bottleneck (unless there are special circumstances like deicing at the gate).
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#35 When I saw "load" in the title I thought cargo not people.
I think a great way to unload cargo is like a bomber, have the cargo in pods and just drop it into a special cargo zone and then let a truck transport it from there. Meanwhile the plane goes and drops more cargo and then back to the airport to reload.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#36The biggest problem with this proposal is that the airline industry's only interest is finding ways to cut costs. (And that's because price is pretty much the only thing we consider when we buy tickets.)
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#37More doors.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#38This is pointless, because boarding time does not waste any time. When a plane lands, it has to stay in the airport for quite a bit of time in most cases - even if you made boarding more efficient, you would not save any time. Refueling, getting in the right take off slot take longer than boarding the plane. And the question is - does this method feel better to the passengers getting on? I don't know, but I kinda dou…
I don't think the time taken for refueling, etc is the limiting factor. There are a couple sequences of events that need to happen (simultaneously) to get the plane ready to leave. Sequence 1: allow arriving passengers to deplane, then clean the plane, board new passengers Sequence 2: Refueling, other maintenance Sequence 3: load checked baggage The time taken to ready the plane is the maximum of the times for the 3…
Boarding passengers takes less than 20 minutes in most cases. Even with very fast airlines like easyjet, the plane sits longer the passengers board.
Also, you know that airports queue planes, right? So a plane can't just hurry up to fill in passengers and take off.
And in any case, why? Let's say you saved enough time to make an extra trip in a single day, then it would be worth it, but this is not going to save it. So you finish your pilots workday 20 minutes earlier, this is no saving. And if you are pushing your planes that hard anyways, there is no time for proper plane maintenance and checkups.
I've done a lot of short trips within Europe by plane, and I've never observed boarding time to be an important factor.
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#39This is pointless, because boarding time does not waste any time. When a plane lands, it has to stay in the airport for quite a bit of time in most cases - even if you made boarding more efficient, you would not save any time. Refueling, getting in the right take off slot take longer than boarding the plane. And the question is - does this method feel better to the passengers getting on? I don't know, but I kinda dou…
Obviously many people would enjoy faster boarding times, but the article barely mentions the huge problems that would come from splitting up families.
When a family's 8-year-old has the window seat, they're expected to enter the plane alone and stow their bag in the overhead compartment?
The only time this is mentioned is where it says "The outcome is fairly robust in that it's relatively insensitive to deviations because of couples or families being seated together."
So now we don't just have 18 separate boarding zones, we have some significant percentage of people in 'boarding groups' with each other. Sounds like a mess.
One of the most advantageous parts of the current system is that it works and it's (probably) not the bottleneck for departure time. Any other method would no doubt cause extra problems, at least for a while, with little to no benefit for the airline.
[edited for clarity]
Re: A Better Way to Load a Plane
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the time taken for refueling, etc is the limiting factor. There are a couple sequences of events that need to happen (simultaneously) to get the plane ready to leave. Sequence 1: allow arriving passengers to deplane, then clean the plane, board new passengers Sequence 2: Refueling, other maintenance Sequence 3: load checked baggage The time taken to ready the plane is the maximum of the times for the 3…
Boarding passengers takes less than 20 minutes in most cases. Even with very fast airlines like easyjet, the plane sits longer the passengers board. Also, you know that airports queue planes, right? So a plane can't just hurry up to fill in passengers and take off. And in any case, why? Let's say you saved enough time to make an extra trip in a single day, then it would be worth it, but this is not going to save it.…
> "Also, you know that airports queue planes, right?"
Yeah, but usually a queued plane is waiting on the tarmac, not at the gate, right? Fixing boarding delays may not always lead to earlier takeoffs, but it can definitely get planes pushed out of the gate faster (freeing that gate for other planes).
Also, boarding time probably depends a lot on the type of plane (ie, even more so than fueling time does). I fly trans-Atlantic every now and then -- boarding a 747 full of people who don't fly regularly almost always takes more than 30 minutes.
Maybe boarding time isn't a delay for small planes, but I'd bet it is for big planes.