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Strict Order Boarding Would Get Planes in the Sky Faster
electrostatic writes "In a Nature.com oldie-but-goodie, a physicist says he has solved a problem that costs airlines millions every year: what is the quickest way to get passengers aboard an aircraft? Boarding is a serious issue for airlines, particularly those operating short flights that run several times a day, yet boarding times have steadily increased for decades. Back in 2005 Jason Steffen of the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois said the method used by many airlines to this day is almost the worst. 'The best way to board, according to the researchers, would be a row-by-row, seat-by-seat, strict order. That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first. I can't imagine fliers will go for that. Next best, they say, would be boarding all the window seats first, followed by those in the aisle. Obviously that's not practical, at least for couples or families traveling together.'"
It would be faster until some guy arrives 5 minutes later then everyone else and has to go through security and get on the plane, because of the order everyone would have to stop, let him through, reorganize and then go through. In an ideal situation it would be faster but chaos is quicker then order because order can never truly happen.
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Well, boo-hoo. I'm so sorry for the First-Class jerks having to be seated last. They get real chairs, plenty of room, and have paid for that. Not to be seated first even though it makes it that much more difficult for everyone else.
Southwest obviously couldn't do this because they don't assign seats. However they have recently switched to a strict-order for boarding from the old A,B,C 'corrals'. (don't let the letters fool you, B1 is just A60+1.) Of course the order of filling is likely to go window-aisle-middle when you pick-your-own.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
This is now the way Southwest boards, and it's quick and rational (as is their "no assigned seating" plan, especially for their typical short flights). Everyone gets a number, and the boarding is in groups of five. United has also tried (and still tries as far as I know) windows first, then middles, then aisles, but the system fails because of familes or others travelling together, all receiving the same boarding group. Also, "elite flyers" board first and screw everything up... United's system works pretty well most of the time though, but the real problem is you can't get everyone ready to board right when they open the doors, so it's never as rational as it should be (eg, some person in row 29 is going to board when row 18 is boarding and cause a traffic jam). Southwest's new system works well because they really don't care when you board or where you sit -- the line up is mostly so frequent flyers and early check-in-ers get the best choice of seats.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
just get everyone boarding to stop thinking that they are better than everyone else.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
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The best solution is to either build your own personal jetpack/flying car or set up a wormhole station to transport people anywhere on the planet instantly :) I've never been on an airplane so maybe someone could explain this to me. How hard is it to get on a place? You line up, give em your ticket, get on the plane, throw your bags overhead, and sit down in your seat. That's all they do in the movies (my only reference) so what's so slow about that? Is it all in the security checkpoints? I keep hearing that's where all the slowdown is.
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Please line up in a tree and maintain the heap invariant while boarding. Thank you for flying nlogn airlines.
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The fastest way to board is to have the seating area at the airport be a removable replica of the seating area inside the airplane. Then, when the plane arrives, the entire airplane opens up, the seating area (with passengers) is removed with a gigantic crane-like machine, and the new seating area (formerly known as the airport waiting area) is loaded in. The area formerly known as the airplane seating area is then put into place inside the airport, and becomes the new airport waiting area. Voila, the entire boarding process in 2 minutes.
That's probably the fastest way without resorting to powerful vacuums, but probably not terribly practical. The most practical way would be to build the plane with sufficient space in the aisle to avoid the "fat guy with the large carry-on that clearly doesn't fit into the overhead bin holding everyone up" problem, but they'd never go for that.
So, maybe a giant vacuum (for disembarking) combined with a giant cannon (for boarding) is the best way. We couldn't guarantee seat assignment this way, of course, but if we encased everyone in foam like the stuff in that car in Demolition Man, it should work with a minimum of injuries.
The problem with these researchers is they aren't thinking outside the box enough.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080227/full/4511040a.html someone please
They could shave some time off of the boarding process - but there is way too little cargo space inside the aircraft. For those who travel often (I'm in a commercial jet more often than my car), the early boarding process gives us 'bread and butter' customers a chance to stow our gear, and those who fly once in a blue moon (usually cheap seats) a longer wait. The inefficiency is a perk, if you travel often.
Sure, they could max/min the time better... but... this is not really something that needs fixing.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
What about having a seating area near the gate that duplicates the seating arrangement on the plane?
You require people to sit there in the correct place, and then you can easily pull people out of the temporary seating area in the correct order.
(You would have to make it big enough for any plane type that is going to be serviced at that gate, and then only seats that exist on the plane are used)
Or an even more interesting, but harder to do version: have the seats on the plane be on a "seat sled" that is swapped out, so that people board the sled before the plane is even there, and then you just swap sleds between the plane. You then let the arriving people depart. (Something about having most of the airframe be doors is probably the weakness of this idea). Or you could have more of the stuff be in the sled, like the entire pressurized compartment, including the galley and bathrooms. Call it the "people magazine".
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that he is right. Of course the human effect in this loop will throw everything off schedule every time. This math answer to a psychology problem is interesting, but I think that if you avoid the space issues that make boarding a plane a lot like filling a cattle trailer it will all go better anyway. They tell you how to use the seat belts, the flotation devices, even the air cup thingies, and how to smile when you use all of them but they never tell you or show you how to fscking load your luggage in the over head bins. I've traveled quite a lot, and I ALWAYS see some diminutive person struggling, or the average joe trying to figure out how to get a hexagonal object in an square hole. People, in general, are not all cut out to do abstract puzzle solving in 3D domains under pressure. Some people are good at packing to move house, others are not. Same problems for both issues.
What is needed is training. Show people how it is supposed to be done the easiest way and most of them will comply.
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The quickest way to load planes would be to put the aircraft door near the middle of the plane.
Many planes also have multiple sets of doors, so that would speed it up even more in exchange for a modest investment in jet ways.
This isn't rocket science, folks. High-tech solutions need not apply here.
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Since all seating is assigned (some airlines notably excepted) the only reason to fight to get on before anybody else is to make sure you've got space in the overheard to store your bag. I was on one flight a couple of years ago where there literally wasn't space in the overhead to store my (relatively) small computer bag (I was seated in a row that had no under seat storage, so anything i had had to go in the overhead). One flight attendant was most insistent that my laptop would have to be gate checked; I protested and another passenger finally volunteered to have his (massive) bag in the overhead gate-checked; I bought him a drink.
I think people would be more than willing to board by row, highest number first, if the airlines would just consistently enforce their rules about how much stuff you can carry aboard. In the winter, overhead space disappears instantly; people stow these huge coats up there along with their bags. And don't get me started about the jerks who throw their bags in the overhead at row 2 and then walk back through an empty plane to site in row 20. Half a dozen of these guys on the plane means everybody up front has to put their bags in the overhead towards the rear of the aircraft, then fight their way back up front through the embarking mob for seating, and THEN wait for everybody else to disembark to get to the rear of the aircraft to recover their bags....
99% of the time when i travel the fuckheads that hold everything up are the soccer moms and their 2 kids and a pram bullshit. and then once your up in the air the little cunts scream and carry on. just to top it off they only take infants because it's free, only it's not free everyone else is paying for it.
the moment there is a no children airline, sign me up.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
People are goddamn slow. An algorithm might save seconds on average. But the fact is, there will be old people, late people, pushy jerks, drunks and security problems. This makes boarding slow, not any loading algorithm. I think people going in freely makes sense. Why? The fast people will make it to the front and be in their seats, it lessens the standing behind people time. Anything other than this will involve fast people standing behind slow people and getting pissed off. I'm sure this is too simple and straight forward to satisfy /. though.
One thing I've never understood is why people think they have to sit together on airplanes ? You spent your whole life with someone - or at least the last few years - and you can't imagine not sitting beside them on a 45 minute flight ? You probably didn't say much to each other on the 60 minute drive to the airport so what gives ?
So on that note, why not board windows / middle / aisle first and NOT let families & people traveling together board together ? Like they can't be apart for the 10 minutes required for boarding ?
. waterwingz
And so freakin' annoying. Is it really so hard to have some sort of order?
Stewards, please, at then end of each flight, get on the megaphone and say:
Can all passengers with luggage in the overhead bins please remain seated until passengers who do NOT have luggage in the overhead bins have left the aircraft.
That way the people who want to get off the plane before they go nuts and start punching random people can do so before the family of five start standing in the aisles trying to remember where they left their five bags whilst juggling their "personal items" and their duty free shopping.
And *then*, if you want to be really efficient, you could request:
Ok, anyone on the aisle who would like to get their luggage from the overhead bin and leave the plane, immediately, can now do so.
And then once they are out of the way:
Ok, everyone else.
But hey, I'm dreaming - it'll never happen.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What would be faster is if everyone checked their $#@$@# luggage. People hauling their pull along bags down the aisle and then looking for overhead room and hoisting them up is a huge delay. Make them check them all and just bring a backpack or laptop bag on board, plus security checkpoints would go faster with less stuff to scan.
-Xen
1) First seat all the attractive women, evenly spaced with the most attractive furthest back.
2) Allow males to find their own seats.
3) Fill in the gaps with the old and ugly.
4) Store any children in the baggage h.. errr... Special Fun House.
This is one of those problems, that while it sounds deceptively simple to solve, and is, given a perfect world, becomes horribly unmanageable to solve once you factor in real life. Having done a significant amount of research on this problem for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling last year, there are many more things that need to be considered then would first appear.
Some of the things that need to be considered with this problem:
To board in any sort of weird order, you have to spend time beforehand ordering people into the groups that you want them to be in. I'll let you think about this for a second. You're trying to get about 100-300 people, who are tired, irritated, with scawling babies, and rather disinterested to organize into some sort of coherent and well planned out structure... WITHOUT using a loudspeaker. Those of you that have been in marching band can contest to how difficult this is.
Most airplanes only have a single aisle, and generally, it is narrow enough that only one person can stand in it at a time. If you try to board one row at a time, maybe, if you're lucky, two people will be taking their seat at a time, while everyone else in the plane queues up behind them. Add in the fact that if the window seat arrives after the aisle and middle seats, they both generally have to get out of their seats to let the window sit down, creating even more delays.
Luggage. If you've ever flown, you've probably seen people trying to cram all of their bags into the overhead bins. If your bin is full, the most natural thing to do is to go and look for one that isn't. Once again though, due to the narrowness of the aisles, this means that you will be holding up many more people while you stuff your things above everyone's heads.
Families, especially those with multiple small children, really don't want to be broken into individual members just to be seated. They all have seats together, generally, so they want to get to those seats together, the boarding order of the airline be damned. And really, can you blame them? What 7 year old wants to have to wait in line, alone, with a bunch of really tall adults, and then have to find a chair in an unfamiliar environment?
First class can generally be ignored in the problem. Because the number of first class fliers compared to the number of coach fliers is very small, they have minimal issues boarding and the time it takes to board them is likewise minimal.
The end results that we came up with is that on average, letting people board randomly, in whatever order they please, beat out every other model that we simulated. On average. Although we didn't have the time and/or resources to come up and run a model, it would be very interesting to model the way Southwest boards their flights, where they have no preassigned seating. But because that factors in the decision making capabilities of people, it would be a far more difficult task to model then simply what order they line up in. That being said though, Southwest does generally have boarding times that are better then other major airlines.
Anyways, stuff to think about.
...is already doing this, but with the order by your check-in order instead of seat order. It used to be the cattle-call of the A/B/C lines, and you dreaded when that first damned person would leave their seat to get in line, forcing /everyone/ to do the same, so you end up standing in line instead of sitting in the waiting area. They fixed that by adding numbers to your group - A16, for example, instead of just A (anyone remember the reused color-coded plastic handout boarding passes??); and there are often pylons in the SW waiting area "holding the line" for you -- a genius upgrade. So the passengers provide the order to the line, and southwest continues their tradition of first-come, first-serve.
It seems like if this would reliably save the airlines time, it'd be easy to implement by following SW's example, except board by rows instead of check-in order.
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Some sort of combination of a conveyor belt, a hatch on the top of the fuselage, and a really big funnel, would seem to be in order. Maybe some sort of compactor system inside the plane as well, for maximum packing efficiency.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
The quickest way to board the plane is with a giant blender and a pump. The only problem you face is having to refund part of the ticket if a toe gets stuck in the blade and doesn't make the flight!
"The best way to board, according to the researchers, would be a row-by-row, seat-by-seat, strict order. That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first. I can't imagine fliers will go for that. "
I mean really, next thing you know someone would suggest that all fliers take off their shoes, turn over nail clippers, and not carry shampoo or extra lap-top batteries. People would never put up with stuff like that.
Three Squirrels
I would pay hard extra $$$ to use such an airline. Why do people find this offensive? It's not like he wants to ban children from planes period.
I would also pay extra $$$ for a no-kids coffee shop or restaurant.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Is the boarding time that long in comparison to the myriad of crap you have to pass to make sure that you're not going to blow something up? If you want fast flights, have some service where peoples luggage is delivered, then when they get to the airport, they are sedated and put in a conveyor belt, only to awaken in another conveyor belt in a foreign country (hopefully the right one). That way, you aren't even conscious for that ungodly wait (which would be less ungodly anyways).
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I would like to see no carry ons - one personal briefcase/purse only.
of course this would also require the whole airline system treat checked bags differently- with much more care and respect so nothing was lost or broken or stolen...
ok forget it. bad idea.
How about guns on planes, for everyone? That might speed up certain passengers.
If the airlines made the announcement "To improve loading times, we request all you rude a-holes who block the isles while taking minutes to stow your luggage and get yourself organized, board last", loading time would be cut in half. If course those self same rude a-holes are going to just ignore it, like they do common courtesy anyway.
I somehow imagine this problem to be one of those where mathematical proofs about real-world situations don't work well because the problem doesn't really model the problem right, so the "solution" is a solution to some other problem than the one at hand.
The airlines charge a lot to be first class. What does that get you? A little free booze, a better class of snacks, a little more arm room, and real silverware... if you're lucky. There are luxury planes where there is more to offer in space and amenities, but those planes often have multiple doors, so they can afford special entrances for first class. On most US domestic flights I've been on, though, people are paying a lot for a very small amount of services, and mostly they're paying to be told they're special. In a lot of them, the seats aren't that different between first and coach. (On some of those, they finally changed the designation of some "first class" seats, admitting they really only, at best, business class.)
So you're saying here that the airlines would make more if they didn't tell people that? That would imply that people are willing to sacrifice being told they're special but still pay for first class. I doubt that, only because then people might not think it was worth it.
And if those seats revert to coach, I bet the airline can't make as much money, which means that although people get on and off of planes faster, the planes are making less, not more. Of course, there's a little to make if one airline is more efficient than another and attracts customers on that basis, but if they all do it, there's nothing to be saved there.
And then there's the issue that you're betting on best case. The airlines still have to plan in worst case, for if something gets jumbled. They can't just leave out passengers when someone does something amiss. And if things go slowly, they can't slip schedules. So it may well be that the added efficiency doesn't end up making the planes move faster.
And even if it did make the planes move faster, it has to move them a whole flight-worth faster in order for there to be another flight... including there has to be gates at the other end waiting to receive the flight, which will only happen if all of the planes are moving smoothly. Any one getting fouled can back things up.
Telling them they can't have carry-on would probably help more than strict order boarding. After all, as soon as one person can't get his luggage into the overhead, he's busy stealing someone else's space, and there's a likely domino effect.
I don't have any brilliant math behind this hunch, but somehow I bet Southwest is more optimal than the formal math makes it sound... kind of like how people say that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. In that case, the "basis" for that is that Democracy alleges to optimize worst case performance, rather than best case performance, making it seem really bad if you're comparing governments by their best-case performance. With airlines, I suspect worst case behavior is more important than best case behavior. And if worst case for "strict order" will be "oops, we goofed" and a resulting chaos, then maybe chaos from the outset (a la Southwest) was all that could ever be aspired to in the first place and it's easier to just go with it.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
They should be able to fill it just as fast. Just open the slides, tilt them up, and slide them in from above.
What?
...is to let people board as a group, but in the latest loading phase that any member of that group belongs to. This applies to almost any phased boarding scheme, including United's window/center/aisle phasing.
The result is that groups have to wait to board together, but they are likely to be slightly more coordinated in staying out of each other's way than three random individuals trying to fill a row in random order.
can't remember airline it was but I do remember seeing structured lines with signs for each row outside of the gate door. Kinda looked like cattle pens. It was at O'Hare Aiport. I've found that the easiest way for me to get on (without people trying to get by me or hitting me with their bags, no rushing me) is to get to the back of the line and then stand at the main plane door until they're about to close. Then i just comfortably walk to my seat without people behind me rushing me. Its very calming.
The proposed method of boarding an airliner may work for ferrying troops to Iraq, but it's just not practical in case of disorganized civilians with kids and luggage. What would help is more assistance from the flight attendants. They need to do more than just point you in the general direction of the coach section. I fly often and I already have a good idea where to find my seat. Most others, however, have no idea and end up shuffling - bags, kids and all - back and forth in search of their seats, making the cabin look like I-95 in Delaware on Friday afternoon.
A few flight attendants strategically positioned along the cabin should help people settle down faster. It would also help if boarding actually begins on time. When there is a delay, people start wandering around the terminal in search of bathrooms, coffee, pizza, etc. So when the plane finally is ready to be boarded, there are always a few passengers missing in action and everyone has to wait for them.
...because we know that airlines are so customer-oriented and really think about what their customers want.
Personally, they could take an hour to board for all I care...just eliminate the middle seat and I will never complain again.
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That seating chart is EPIC.
- You do not stand around waiting for some fat person to move. You are typically seated right away.
- You typically get complimentary coffee or liqueur.
- If you have more luggage, the flight attendents use to handle it very nicely. Back in the 60's, and even 70's, we carried on board a lot more luggage. First class was really allowed to carry a lot.
- If you had to hit the head, you typically were not fighting with others over that. While coach was frequently closed, first class was open. And of course, ONLY to first class.
I would still rather get on right away and chill out than deal with the hassle in the cattle call.I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Get rid of all old people or anyone who cannot move at an average or above rate. Get rid of all morbidly obese people who cannot fit in a single seat or move in a single aisle without rubbing up against both aisle seats.
The time will come when I cannot move so fast myself, I know, but for some reason, I can't imagine my attitude about not wanting to be in anyone else's way will change. (To be clear, I don't want to be in anyone else's way. I don't want anyone in my way either. A week in Japan will prove that it CAN work that way in real life.)
Becoming obese takes a LONG freaking time to get that way. It's not something that happens in a week. It takes months and even years to go from a 32" waist to over 50". Most of you ridiculously fat people do NOT have my sympathy when there's too much you can do to prevent it.
Installing a "club room" near every gate would be really expensive to build and operate, so it won't happen. Now, if you're a first class passenger, would you rather sit on the narrow hard seats in the terminal and pay for beverages, or board the plane and sit in comfort with a cold drink?
I aspire to make that choice one day.
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All we need now are drill sergeants telling your grandma, "Assholes and elbows better be on this mufuckin bird in 5 seconds or we're having a scuff session".
Loading back to front and unloading front to back could probably save airlines millions and save us all time (the airlines will pocket the savings).
The problem is, consumers want transportation to be a luxury, not a utility.
"You've got 5 seconds to un-ass my bird!" or making people board with rigid rules will prolly not sell, and consumers will take their purchases to the friendlier and inefficient carriers
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I once flew around the Soviet Union a few years before the fall of the Berlin wall.
They had a very strictly enforced an order where people in the back of the jet got on last and got off first.
It seems that on at least some Aeroflot models, if you didn't have enough passengers in the front balancing the weight of those in the rear, the plane would tip backwards.
This study reminds me of the old joke about the early days of the space race.
NASA was worried about the effects of hi-G on astronauts, so they hired some ivory-tower types to work on the problem.
About three months later, they came back to NASA and said, "We've solved it!"
The NASA manager in charge asked them to detail their solution.
The head professor said, "OK. First, assume a perfectly spherical astronaut...."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Sometimes the late passenger isn't the passenger's fault.
I've been left with 15 minutes to get to my second flight, when my first flight touched the ground. I have yet to miss a flight like that, and I have only begged once for them to reopen the door.
Last week in Vegas, we got off our first flight, and had 90 minutes to get to the second one. We went to the departure gate, and verified the sign still said our flight and destination, so we went to eat. With about 20 minutes of boarding time left, we showed back up to the same gate, which was now closed. No agents, no passengers, nothing. I checked the boards. It had been moved to another gate in another area of the airport. We made it with about 5 minutes of boarding left (about 15 passengers still in the boarding area).
Now, am I suppose to really camp out at the gate for the full 90 minutes? No way. Was I suppose to know that what should have been a 30 minute meal in any somewhat capable restaurant would take 70 minutes? (btw, "Chili's Too!") They weren't even busy, they were just pathetically slow.
We had intended to blow $1 on the slot machines, and didn't even get a chance, because the restaurant was so damned slow.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I am surprised that you were modded down. I now have 2 children, but I still remember the days before. There were plenty of times that I wished for no kids or extremely heavy ppl around me. It was the later issue that lead me to fly Midwest airlines whenever possible. They were flying super 80's in 2x2 configs; not quite first class, but close enough for just a little bit more. In fact, I was surprised when frontier airlines chose to remove a row, rather than a column on their new aircrafts. They said that they wanted to fly 100% load factors. But it seems to me that a 3x3 or even better a widebody with a single column missing would easily encourage loads of Americans to fly them.
But there is a good side to all that. If somebody starts an airline like that, it will keep ppl like you off of the flights that I am on with my children. BTW, that is not really a slam. So far, my kids have traveled great, but I have seen other kids not travel great and ppl just gripping left, right, and sideways about it. It gets old.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Digital seats, digital seat assignments, and digital boarding routines. How about somethign incredibly more simpler and less sophistimicated.
How about loading it back to front, not by seat assignment (which requires human beings to line-up according to rules) but by the order in which those human beings walk onto the craft -- you know, like a freakin' bus. "Timmy, please move all the way to the back of the bus."
Then, instead of controlling the problem of humans within an aircraft each having seat assignments, you get to control the order with which people board the plane. That's a lot easier and amounts to using your airline's stupid reward points to 'reward' people for taking otherwise undesirable seats.
Especially when we're talking about short commuter flights, it's a short flight -- you don't care which seat you have. You do care how long you sit without moving -- you know, just like a bus.
Man, a bus, I talk like I know something. It's been well over ten years since I've been on a bus. But that's not the point. Well, it's not the point here. We're talking about airplanes. I use those on a regular basis. Although I've never described the experience quite like a neighbouring passenger who said she's "made a career out of strapping a plane to my ass". I miss her. She was an advertising or marketing or sales person for a company that I don't remember, on a flight I've forgotten, going somewhere I can't recall, sometime in the last ten years. Maybe fifteen. Maybe five.
Hmm... I fly Southwest with my wife a few times a year now. Their boarding used to suck majorly.
First, they boarded first-come. Ok, I get the A boarding, and I show up early and take my place 5th or 6th, with my wife whining about sitting on the floor with me.
About 30 minutes before boarding, up to a dozen people show up to join their buds ahead of me in the A line. I'm trying to not be too ungracious and call them out. What will I get, Mace or Security? Ok, I'm basically screwed again.
At boarding, I know they'll board familes with small children and those needing assistance. Ok, so the kids get the choice seats up front, fine. BTW, 767s can be very noisy over the wings. If you get a loud, pulsing engine noise, you just got a lousy plane,. Some are tolerable.
But the last time I flew, it seemed like a LOT of people 'need assistance' boarding. Some are in wheelchairs, and I can't begrudge that. Some are on canes, and the last time 4 needed crutches. Then another half-dozen just needed 'assistance'.
I was there early, first group, had 6 people in front of me 90 minutes before boarding. My wife and I boarded to row 22. Pus.
Sadly, Southwest is too good a deal.
But, I cannot imagine it gets any better with groups of 5. "Now boarding families with small children and those needing assistance". Plan on row 22.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
""I can't lift this 300-lb carry-on into the overhead..."
Bingo. The problem is that people can't get on and sit down because half the plane is trying to find a place to stowe their carry-on bags.
Which means that the solution, as I've often maintained, is to ban all carry-on luggage with the exception of purses and one briefcase or small backpack per person. Everything else goes through as checked backage. No garment bags. No wheelies. Nothing else.
This also speeds up getting OFF the plane, as everyone isn't now trying to get their 300lb bags down, and also speeds up security as well, since there are fewer bags to scan and x-ray and manually search. It wasn't bad when just the stewies did it. Now 2/3rds of the plane is trying to "save time" as well, and it's just not working.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Didn't NWA save 5-10 minutes when they switched from section boarding to the free for all?
have the seat mounted on a sliding chassis. get everyone who arrives at the gate to "board" in their seat complete with overhead and below deck luggage meals, and perhaps even fuel. Have the ticket agents walk through and verify tickets while passengers are already seated. With everyone verified and locked in wait for the plane to land. Once the plane arrives have it "dock" with the terminal and slide one passenger module out and the next passenger module in. Boarding would in theory only take about 2 minutes, perhaps even less. Once everyone is seated force them to endure programing laced with advertising so as not to waste a captive audience and maximize profits by using idle time to create up-sales.
Now you keep your plane flying more, sell more crap, and make more money.
if anyone patents this idea let it be known that it was posted on Slashdot first and as such is no longer an original concept.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
No need for top-loading via crane if you use a front-loading 747 freighter, C-5 Galaxy, or An-124. Put wheels on the seating module and rails on the plane. The boarding area has two parallel bays with a railroad switch, just like at a train terminal.
The crucial element is to allow passengers to approach their seats from anywhere -- from the open outside area as well as the interior aisle, from the back as well as the front -- instead of all filing in through a single door.
I live in China. As anyone who has visited here knows, the concept of a queue or waiting in line doesn't exist. When the doors open, there is a unorganzied hoard pushing madly to get into the plane. On top of this, people totally ignore the carry-on rules and routinely have several large boxes. It is pure chaos.
And yet, my china flights always board much faster than my US flights. The last flight I took was a fully-loaded 747 from Shanghai to Beijing. It boarded in about 10 minutes. A similar flight in US I had a few months ago took almost 30 minutes to board. I think there is something to be said for highly motivated chaos.
On a related note, I've never been able to figure out exactly why going through security in the US takes so long. As near as I can tell, the China and US airports do the exact same screening - the liquids in the bag, laptops out, no shoes, etc. - plus a passport check - and still it is on average 3x faster. So strange...
- davevr
The CIA denies reports of water boarding planes.
Sure, get them on the plane faster. Then instead of sitting in the boarding lounge for an hour and then another three on the tarmac, they can spend all four hours on the tarmac.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
The answer is even simpler and proably not possible, given the configuration of jetways: use the rear door for boarding. All people MUST file to the front of the plane. (Upon arrival they will be first out the front doors and rewarded for being early) The plane continues to fill, front to back and windows to aisle, until there are no more seats. Anyone left at the gate is told to go to the counter and don't be so late next time.
Just go to any Golden Arches, any grade school, any high school ... "them thar's astronut material, folks."
Putting too many of them in an airplane guarantees it won't crash - too heavy to take off.
What gets me is the 600 pound blobs who say they deserve extra free seating because they're "handicapped" by their fat ...
and we would like to welcome our new passengers, the previous customers of FIFO Airlines, which went out of business due to time delays
GIGO Airlines has offered to honor our coupons, but you don't want to fly with them if you want get where you really wanted to go
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how sophisticated the sorting and boarding system is that an airline develops, it won't stand up to the first 10 people who board who have "special needs." It's not that these get abused - it's just that it takes time for the people with the toddler strollers, the wheelchairs, and the unaccompanied minors to get situated.
In all of the flights I've been on myself, I have yet to have been delayed by someone sitting in first class waiting to make an entrance. My wife and I, on the other hand, have had to slow things down for everyone else by getting kids placed, getting the diaper bag last into the carry-on stowage (we were more likely to need a clean diaper than a book), and so forth.
So, I confess. We're part of the vast conspiracy to force the airlines into bankruptcy by having the temerity to bring children on our flights.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I wonder if dual boarding (ie, boarding from the front and the back at the same time) would be cost efficient for them. They'd obviously need almost 2x as many staff to cover both entrances, but maybe that cost is less than having the plane delayed due to boarding problems.
I'm always annoyed that I can't disembark via the back exit when I'm getting off (I always get stuck in the rear of the plane), and it irks me to be standing in a long queue to get on the plane when I know they could effectively double the bandwidth by opening up the back entry. I guess they don't want people walking on the tarmac unless they absolutely have to.
Are you serious? It took a physicist to figure this one out? I thought it was pure common sense. I mean I thought about doing what they proposed when I was in middle school probably.
the problem is that too many of you self important people feel that you are somehow entitled to special treatment because you dont want to wait like everyone else, or because you are bringing more crap aboard than you are supposed to... or because you insist on dawdling in the aisles so that you can put everything you own in the overhead compartment. For clarity let me emphasize again I am not talking about those who ACTUALLY need the time, people with injuries, casts, wheel chairs, the elderly, someone with some other actual NEED to board early. Newsflash, they arent asking who WANTS to board early, they ask who needs to.
:-)
Even with the "zoned" boarding, it never fails that lots of people decide that they "need extra time to board" because they are asshats. what's my basis for saying this? because when I am in the first boarding group for a seat at the back of the plane there are always more than a handful of people who "rush" ahead of me in the boarding line that I walk past en route to the back of the plane. Many who are sitting in rows that arent even in the "middle" of the plane (there's always a couple people in the first nonFC row). these are not elderly people, or people who were walking with crutches or any impediments at all. these are usually random people mostly non elderly. more often than not somebody wearing a suit who is a business traveler, also frequent is the "just finished shopping for lots of crap" lady with multiple bags of shit. And yes I am aware that they board FC and Elite flyers at the same time and I watch and the either these are "Elite"'s who don't realize it until then (not likely) a couple arriving late (plausible) or mostly people I saw standing around near me waiting who didn't go up for Elite (because they aren't) but decide that the whole boarding in order thing doesnt apply to them.. It also never fails that one of these people causes a major delay when they go to sit in the like 5th aisle and dig through their bags before putting them all on the overhead and sitting down.
if they want to board faster they should board from the front and the rear of the plane simultaneously. they should also board first class last... which is actually what I would want if i was FC... I wouldnt want to spend a god damn extra minute on that plane if i could avoid it
I've flown a lot this past year for a non business traveler and the most annoying thing is when they hide a delay by just boarding the plane and then having you sit there for an hour before doing anything other than disconnecting the boarding bridge and closing the hatch at which time of course we are instructed to turn off the cell's and electronics.
arriving late doesnt screw up jack, its the same as it is now. if you show up late and your section has already boarded you proceed on or otherwise you can wait at the back of the line. you dont cause any more of an inconvenience then anyone else. what would REALLY speed it up is if they didnt let as much come onto the plane for "carry on" luggage and had you check that stuff AT THE GATE to be reclaimed at the gate. its not that hard you walk on the plane, you shove a carryon up top and then you take your small 'personal item' or briefcase whatever and shove it under the seat in front if you.. if it cramps your legs then bring less stuff on board the plane. But I don't think people will much like that; myself included... theres something nice about keeping your baggage with you the whole time and not having to wait for the godly slow baggage claim.
I know not many will likely agree with me on this part (and understandably if you are traveling with a large family of youngsters for a long vacation) but I would be just happy to pick up my baggage right when i got off the plane and carry it through the airport.
on another note, let me know when he figures out a way to have plane that will prevent babies from crying on it. that or will someone PLEASE start an airline with a "NO BABY" policy. I'm aware that I was a baby m
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
United may have a relatively efficient boarding process, but it doesn't help if the plane shows up too late for boarding time to matter.
United's problem is that their gate personnel are sloppy about the boarding procedure. They'll call "boarding group 1", which these days is nominally the rear of the plane, but they aren't strict about who they let through at that point. Then, after 20-or-so passengers board, they'll call group 2, even though there are plenty of 1s still queued up.
If they just followed their own procedure, and if the flight crew was more ruthless about telling people to step out of the aisles, it would be oh-so-much smoother.
The best thing they could do to speed up both the boarding process and the disembarking process would be to remove the overhead bins. Probably not the most popular move with the paying passengers, but it would keep the aisle moving.
Hmm. This might even speed up security by 15% in a way that the TSA would accept. Where's my $500,000?
Isn't order boarding a form of torture?
Or am I confusing that with something else?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
The worst are people that cram around the boarding area and / or try to board when it's not their turn. Sometimes these people get waved through, but sometimes not. And if they don't get turned around to wait for their turn they end up blocking the people that could be getting seated in the back of the plane.
I always thought it would be great to have sort of a "bad boarder" or detention area to corral people off to the side of the gate that tried boarding at the wrong time. Just a nice little waiting area that they direct you to stand in and wait. And then once the entire plane has boarded you and all your non-boarding in time friends can join. And then everyone could give them a nice Nelson-style "Hah hah" laugh as they walked bye.
I gotta have more cowbell.
Your "Homepage" link is broken.
Why would anyone want to obscure the truth? That'd be un-American... wait, nevermind. :-\
I read this posting title as "Strict Water Boarding Would Get Planes in the Sky Faster".
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Think about it, the best way to board the plane would be EXACT order from BACK to FRONT.
The reason is simple. People have carry-ons and coats and all kinds of things that go in the overhead compartment. People could be putting things in the overhead compartments without backing up the line. If you load FRONT to BACK then the next row wouldn't be able to enter without waiting for the previous row's overhead items to be put in. Loading BACK to FRONT everyone could enter the plane and put the things in the overhead compartments without backing up the line.
Pretty simple.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/09/autodocker-to-make-boarding-and-deplaning-faster/
Our lines are shorter. ;-)
It's been done: Hooters Air. 2003-2006. Hooters Air was a flop, but that was probably due to the choice of destinations, which included Myrtle Beach SC, Gary IN, Allentown PA, Rockford IL, Baltimore MD and Fort Meyers FL.
Fuck you.
What they need is a strictly "business class" and "no-kids" airline. One carry on bag. It gets measured in the terminal. If it doesn't fit... it gets checked. NO EXCEPTIONS. No strollers. No children. No families of 5. No fat people. No wheelchairs. No old people. No trying to pack your guitar in the overhead bin. No first time fliers. No tourists.
Start an airline that caters exclusively to the young, single, business individual (or couple). People who fly all the time. People who fly for a living. Cut out all the bullshit and what do you have? Comfortable air travel. I've had the privilege of flying on a few private chartered jets and MY GOD it makes you completely re-evaluate modern air travel. You show up to the airport with your bag in hand. The pilot(s) meet you in the terminal and ask: "Are you ready to go?". You get on the plane and you fly to where you want to go. There is no security check bullshit. There are no screaming children. No assholes who are visiting LA LA land for the first time. It's nothing but, pure bliss. I'd give my left nut to be able to travel this way on a regular basis.
How about having two or three entrances instead of one?
I mean, seriously, you don't plan on eating them without butter do you?
...would make our whole lives more efficient.
But what fun would that be?
the concept of windows middle then aisle. if you have a particularly slow window passenger in row 5 who needs to put up a roller, he/she will be holding up everybody behind him/her trying to get to their window seats for rows >5.
if anything, the current method (at least for most airlines) of boarding at the rear section first makes more sense. The problems that we currently face are mostly due to either people ignoring the group designations (and the ticket collector not enforcing it) or allowing premium passengers to board first or at any time. Enforce groups assiduously and don't allow premium passengers to board out of order and the current method shouldnt be too bad.
Oh man. Flying Newark-Delhi return as I do every 3 months is a nightmare. The return flight is insane. Boarding procedure at Delhi is horrible: there's only one door to the gate, in a corner of the departure hall, and everyone (450-odd people) just crowds around. None of the Continental staff speak Hindi, and they don't have a loudspeaker, so no one can hear. If you're an Elite member (like me) you literally have to push through this impenetrable wall of people to get to the door. No one listens to the staff, and everyone just yells, screams, and act like caged animals (mind you this is everyone, not just Indians: Americans just turn into animals in this situation). By the time you get to the jetway, you're held up again, because security has to search you- mind you, this is a second time, as you've already gone through security once to get into the departure hall. After experiencing all this, I've never complained about boarding procedures anywhere else.
Could such an airline be price competitive with current airlines? Could such an airline make any profit?
no, NWA saved 5-10 minutes with their strict Eazy-E-will-pop-a-cap-in-yo-ass policy.
I'm 30, I assume that I will never again see any money I give to the government for SSI. Its a tax imposed on me by AARP. If anyone my age or younger is ingliding SSI in their retirement portfolio, get a new financial adviser.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
> I'm 30, I assume that I will never again see any money I give to the
> government for SSI.
That's about where I am myself. But the value of your retirement portfolio will nevertheless depend on the amount of goods and services produced by people when you retire...
Put another way, if we all stopped having kids now, when we retired there would be no one to buy food from with all that money we'd saved. The usual hyper-inflation (too much cash, not enough goods) would ensue.
One way to speed things up would be to have people pass through a metal detector before the real thing. Maybe have a conveyor belt without the X-ray where people put their metal things and such into the trays, they walk through the metal detector. A practice run. If they set it off they don't have to hold the line up, you can continue on. If they set off the second one that is actually the checkpoint, they get sent off to be waved down.
Of course, there are some problems here. Doubling the number of metal detectors for one.
You miss the best part of the cartridge plan. The cartridges can be loaded downtown and taken to the plane on a rail, light rail or subway car. How many businessmen would go for that? No longer having to find your way to the airport, no security lines to wait in, no parking issues, etc. You get onboard near your place of work downtown and return there.
Then they might actually have a more orderly boarding. No-one in their right mind, and especially those of us with work to do, wants to sit in those horrendous little seats with the nasty echoes of announcers in the background and the lack of power or network connections you have in the general boarding area. Except for Southwest, I rarely bother being in the boarding area anywhere near the departure time, because the flights just aren't on time. I hang out in the frequent flier lounge with a widget that tells me what the real boarding status is. Then I show up 10 minutes before departure, and usually still have to wait, even though I'm top-tier FF on every major airline.
The problem isn't mathematical, it's psychological. No-one believes the airlines, so no-one listens to what they say.
IMNSHO, Continental is currently the best major carrier, in terms of value. Internationally, United is still the best.
There, I said it. Makes about as much sense as banning any demographic.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
>>
Could such an airline be price competitive with current airlines? Could such an airline make any profit?
>>
Such a "business-class airline" would be no more competitive with current airlines than a business/first class ticket is "competitive" with an economy ticket on the same plane. It doesn't need to be.
Is champagne price competitive with beer? Does it need to be to be sold at a profit?
strawman right there. i never proposed anything about no more children, what i propose is that people pay for their own brats and don't inflict them on the rest of us.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Europeans might use real butter. In America we would have used artificially flavored oil like the kind we cherish on our movie popcorn. There would be no way to stop passengers from just licking the delicious oil off though.
I think more efficient would be to just tranquilize all passengers and quickly have them sorted and loaded into the plane like luggage.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There are two big reasons to carry on luggage.
One, it saves you 20-30 minutes of waiting around for your bags to get off the plane. (And in rare circumstances, it can save you an hour or more when, for example, your bags can't come off the plane because of lightning.)
Two, and more important to business travelers, is it preserves flexibility. If you've carried on your luggage, and something odd happens to your flight, you can take your bag, get off, and get on another plane. If your bag has been checked, you then have to figure out how you're going to get your bags that are coming in on a different flight.
paintball
This presumes that it would be possible to line up people perfectly prior to boarding; that is a pretty naive assumption. In fact, there would likely be large numbers of mistakes anyway.
I suspect that airlines actually are boarding pretty close to optimally, subject to the constraints that they are operating under: assigned seats, passengers that make mistakes, and aircraft layout and design.
Why not just add more doors to the plane and have people board from both sides. Why does everybody on the plane have to cram in through the same hole?
If you are late, you board at the end. Or don't board. Many airlines do it (I shall know, I have missed a couple of flights with cheap airlines for being late).
Special needs? Elderly people, children, etc board first or last. Nobody can carry nowadays baggage heavier than 10 kg (at least in the EU). that is around 20 lb. Your scenario simply isn't happening.
For the airline is not the same. Once they sold you a ticket and you are waiting in the gate to be left in, they have to take you. They can't say "sorry folks, only the people queuing up to here will fly today". Well, they could, but frankly we know that is not an option, so they have to take a later slot with all the cost implications. Thus it is vital for them to get passengers in the plane asap so they can use the slot they have been allocated.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or your airline is fooling you.
In the improbable case that this would ever happen to me, I would demand that the offending peace of luggage is removed from the first class area (either put elsewhere or put in the cargo area).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't get it. Seems pretty obvious to me if you only have 1 gate thingy then you put the door in the middle of the plane for boarding. That way, 50% of the boarders will diverge in 2 directions. Half going toward the nose and half toward the tail. The density of passengers traveling down the aisle is diminished by 1/2 so getting to and finding your seat will be 2x faster.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Thing is you don't really need to increase the efficiency "to maximum", just "quite a bit". Meaning applying the scheme to 60% of the passengers would already improve the process drastically. You don't have to -force- everyone to board in a strict order, just encourage it - say by marking places in the access corridor where people queue just prior to boarding the plane. "Front rows first please, please wait by your row numbers marked on the wall". And if anyone is out of order, they just get in just the same, spoil the pattern a little, have to squeeze through etc but you have order with a small bit of chaos in it instead of a total chaos.
You won't reduce the time to 5 minutes the utopian scheme would give, but you can easily reduce it by 5 minutes for which so many lines strive.
Claiming this idea is completely useless is the limited choice fallacy. So you have to either manage humans like robots, 100% fault-proof, or allow total chaos, no middle way possible. But this solution scales up just fine, the better order the better the result and handling exceptions is perfectly fine.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
And this is *ALREADY* happening. Look at the boarding pass of some EU airlines (example : Deutsche LH) you will see what they call "boarding zone" near your boarding place, a number between 1 and 6. If i recall correctly 1 and 6 are windows, 2 and 5 are middle , and 3 and 4 are corridor. When introduced it was supposed to be used to accelerate boarding time by sorting the passenger which go first in the plane. Practically it seems that getting the passenger to board with their correct boarding zone is harder than herd sheep. So instead they do that only on the biggest flight, and on some non german stations.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
is that the sort to order people is O(n * log (n)), whereas if you just have people file into the plane, the worst case time is O(n), so this solution won't scale up as well on very large planes, say with a few million people, depending on what constant time it takes to seat an individual person.
Of course, since we have n processing elements, we can potentially use parallelism to increase asymptotic complexity. For instance, if you put out n signs with seat numbers 1 though n outside the plane, and had each person walk to the sign with their name, and assumed that there was plenty of space so that people couldn't block each other as they do on board the plane, than it will only take each person n time to find their sign (indexing isn't a constant time operation in this case), and since this occurs in parallel the entire sort will be O(n). In this case the complexity will be no worse for very large planes.
Or maybe I should just RTFA?
If you can't figure out why the GP is a troll, good luck in life, pal.
I am referring to the large number of business travelers who (because the company is paying for it or for whatever other reasons) are forced to buy the cheaper tickets.
There are about a million shades of gray between silently brooding and telling people off. You, as a single guy, presumably not educated in child psychology, and obviously not in love with children enough to do day care or anything, should never go about telling people how to control their children. You're not qualified!
You remind me of my former downstairs neighbor. He seemed to have very unrealistic expectations of what it means to live in an apartment with someone living above you. He would constantly bang on his ceiling but never once did he ever come to our day and say, "Hey, it's pretty noisy down there and my kid is trying to nap." He never brought up the issue with the land lord. In fact when we had the land lord ask him if there was a problem, he claimed he was putting up pictures and that there was no problem. If he was putting up pictures that often I am afraid I would fear for the structural integrity of the building. No, he just kept trying to control us through banging on our ceiling. It never worked for him because we're not loud people and really had no idea how we could help him. And frankly, when someone bangs on your floor often enough, you just don't give a shit if you are bothering them anymore. He has since moved, and I would not be surprised to find him living below someone else, pounding on their floor.
Likewise, you apparently think you can force people to behave in more socially acceptable ways. You can't. You also seem to have unrealistic expectations of both children and parents. I never suggested you tell off the parents. I suggested talking to the parents or the stewards. You might be surprised what can happens when you say things like "please" rather than act all put out, entitled, and controlling because, god forbid, someone inconvenience you in some way.
And spare me the claptrap about 'please think of the children' idiots. Do you think you are the only one those children are bothering? You have allies there and if you are getting more grief it is either because you are being completely unreasonable in the first place or because you are being such an asshole that no one wants to be associated with you.
I recently flew Easyjet and noticed they didn't allocate any seat numbers on my boarding pass. You could pay extra to board first, but not many people did.
:-)
The people that did pay had a couple of minutes to start boarding before the stampede followed them, naturally it was very competitive and you grabbed the closest seat. It seemed to speed up the boarding process no end, on other airlines I sometimes wait for my late boarding call before boarding because it's so slow
Sometimes if you wait long enough they make you feel important and call your name!
Boarding strategies do not obey to speed but to mass center location!.
Some planes (the ones which are longer, i.e. 200 seats with one aisle or the 400 seats with two aisles) have strong dependency of the airplane center of masses with the position of the people seating...
Of course, load and fuel have their influence in this, but people is yet important
Correct center of masses is vital because has a direct impact in fuel consumption and security: if the center of masses gets out of the range, the airplane would not fly (would fail at take off!)
So please, do not mess with this!!!
In my end of carrer project, a 200 seat airplane with one aisle design, I had to take into account the position of every one seating in the airplane (for all the possibilities from one passenger to 200), and I can ensure that having 50 people only flight in the front of the deck would place the center of masses out of the safety margin.
Air pilots have a one year subject dedicated only to these issues (including of course, load and fuel).
Considering there's a German 'smoker's only' and 'nudists only' airline, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that a business only airline could work.
I fly internationally twice a month. Everyone has a right to fly, but not everyone should fly. At least without learning some basic life skills.
Yeah, and you'd probably want them to have regular flights to all sorts of places, right ? What are you on again, and where can I get some ?
If you're too poor to charter a flight or have your own airplane, that's your problem. That "business class, no-kids" airline you suggest isn't going to "take off", in a business sense.
Your "self funded retirement" is no doubt roughly a mix of stocks and bonds, tilted towards bonds. Bonds are basically "secured" few future revenues, and stocks are a claim on future earnings. Those future revenues and earnings are not a function of current economic activity, they are a function of future economic activity. In other words, it is the growing economy (a function of growth in population and growth in productivity) that creates that growing wealth.
Investment Capital doesn't "generate" activity, it enables the activity. People consuming the outputs from that business activity generate the economic activity, and the investment capital than receives a return on investment for enabling that activity.
Those of you that choose to become biological dead-ends are NOT subsidizing the rest of us... you're economic model creates the straw man. You assign all children under 18 (or 21, whatever) to the parents, and assign the benefits of those subsidies and services to the parents, then, when the child becomes a useful economic agent, you assign all the economic benefit from that child to that child. In that model, of course there is a subsidy.
If you treat the child as an independent economic actor, then there is no subsidy. There is an investment phase, where society spends resources on educating that child, while parents spend resources feeding and clothing it (generally well in excess of any tax benefits from the child). When the child finishes being educated, one presumes that their economic activity will far exceed the costs of educating them and helping them reach adulthood.
Alternatively, if you credit Expected Future Earnings back to the parents, and were to net Expected Future Tax Revenues against the government "subsidies," I think that you'll find that society profits for the birth of each child.
However, society pays part of the child's costs (public school education, if they take advantage of it, nothing if they attend a private or parochial school), and the parents pay another part. Society gets it's return (future tax revenues), and parents do not get a credit (towards social security if the mother work, etc.) beyond a small tax credit and exemption. So parents are subsidizing society with their economic expenditures on their children.
You do owe the people that chose to have children, because if everyone followed your twisted world view, there would be no economic activity to generate a return on your capital, and no providing of the goods and services you want. That is only available because other people made the sacrifices necessary to bring a next generation into the world.
A small airline in the UK uses exactly that method of boarding. It may be unique in that the owner of the airline greets you at the departure lounge as well. When the announcement is made, he explicitly asks that you board in row order. If you try to get on early, you're asked to kindly wait until your row is boarding. Everyone boards quickly. One of the most pleasant airline experiences I've ever had.
Yes, Palmair is a small independent airline and it only flies a very limited service from one airport. But it gets it right.
It's even more straight forward than this ... just fly empty planes around the globe ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=493357&in_page_id=1770
Westjet here in Canada flies variants of the 737 and nothing else. You are guaranteed to fly in a 737-700, 737-800 or 737-600. As these aircraft are all about 34" feet long, Westjet employs dual jetways at airports like Vancouver. Loading is much faster, but just as importantly people have a better opportunity to stow their carry-on luggage without blocking the aisle for those passengers waiting to pass. Calgary also is equipped with dual jetways, although it appears they don't always use them for some reason.
At smaller airports without jetways, Westjet will open the front and rear doors and move stairs in to facilitate loading and unloading.
It really does work better.
So far, I haven't seen any technological solutions to this? Why? Isn't this Slashdot? :)
Something I'd like to see is boarding passes as devices. You check in, and you get a token, a gadget, which has a little battery, a little display, some simple flashing lights, and wifi connectivity to the airport system.
So you need to get through security, and you're a bit late, and you have no idea who in front of you is more late than you, or if it's ok to skip the line. But if the airport has these boarding passes, you can build in a priority tracking system. Is your boarding pass blinking green? If so, skip the line to security. Is it not blinking? Fuck off, stand in line like everyone else. Big signs at security saying that you should let people through with blinking tokens.
Ok, you didn't get a gate number at check-in, so you have to stand around looking at the monitors in the airport. You can't go anywhere else, because the gate you need to be at might be far away, so no dawdling. If the boarding passes are connected, they can be updated in real-time, make a little beep, and display your gate on itself.
Also, passengers that are late or forgot their departure time and hold up the flight (graaoorrrgghh!!) could have their boarding pass remind them about where they should be. Make the pass beep and blink more, the more late the passenger is. No more relying on people listening to the speakers, which they don't.
Finally, boarding. So, making people board in the right order is hard. With a little blinkenlights it'll be easier. Is your pass blinking green? Then go board. Is it red? Fuck off, wait until your turn. No more big groups of boarding (passengers on row 44 to 28, please board, bla bla bla), you can individually signal each passenger that he or she should board, making sure to fill the plane up from the rear.
That's how we get people on planes in the military all the time. (Technical term: reverse chalk order) Of course, we also have an even quicker way of getting off the plane.
Although the statements are all well and good, you have to make a lot of assumptions for the maths to work - namely that people are ordered, logical and will know where they are going.
Many moons ago, my A-Level project consisted of something quite similar. I had to do a traffic simulation and work out what the "ideal" interval was for traffic-light changes. I spent months on the project, got top marks because there were absolutely no mathematical errors in it and it had quite a lot of higher-level maths in there.
The results of my formulae were applied to a simple crossroads, with cars accelerating and deccelerating perfectly at fixed points of the traffic light cycle, depending on their speed, the position and interval of the lights, etc. Cars entered the system at a uniform rate from all junctions and several phases of the traffic lights were simulated.
Unfortunately, the formulae took all this information and the answers (for traffic light change intervals) were given as solutions to a large polynomial. Despite the mathematics being verified several times by several people, and the assumptions being called "reasonable", the optimal answers given for this simplest of simulations was to have traffic lights change at intervals of -5 seconds and 0.02 seconds. Neither of which gave the cars time to accelerate across the junction (or even be able to SEE the lights change) completely.
Factoring in some more terms for things like "being able to cross the junction before the lights change", "being able to physically react to the light changing", etc., even more bizarre answers were arrived at until a bit of "fudge factoring" in the initial assumptions made it give sensible answers.
I quite believe that the methods used currently are possibly the worst *mathematically* but I doubt they're the worst for airports and humans to handle. If it was, it would have changed already to get people on/off and get the planes turned around faster.
Still to do this day, I wish the school had had the resources at the time for me to do a proper computer-controlled visual simulation. Alas, they were still teaching 18-year-olds BBC BASIC at the time.
A totally sweet idea would be a cabin that is at the boarding gate. Everyone gets situated in this modular cabin and then when the plane arrives the cabin is moved into the plane. I know it sounds ridiculous but it would work if it was safe of course. Everyone would be seated well before the plane needs to take off and can be seated before the plane even gets to the gate.
Balderdash!
The majority of suitcases sold on the market are junk. Samsonite and Delcy are just a bit better. The problem could be solved by an unbreakable smart suitcases.
Why bomb could be made smart and suitcases not? Why the body armor can be made from Kelvar but not a suitcase? An RFID tag or a GSM module can immediately report where the suitcase is. So the risk of a loss could be minimal.
If the standards that bottles larger than 100 ml are banned can be introduced in EU. Why not a standard for the suitcases?
What is going on with the checked-in baggage in IATA is the real mess, apocalypses. This costs the industry billions. Slow boarding is just a tip of the iceberg. And the reason of it is the stupid medieval baggage.
A better plane/airport design is needed, if the passenger cabin area was modular and removable, then all passengers could be "preboarded" and "postdisembarked". This way passenger loading schedules would be totally independent of planes arrival and departure. Before the plane arrives at the gate the departing passengers and their carry-on luggage would be seated and luggage stored in the cabin module. Once the plane lands the arriving passenger cabin module would be removed and taken to a gate to disembark, and the departing passenger cabin could be loaded onto the plane. The departing cabin modules would be loaded through the nose of the plane, pushing the arriving modules out the back as the arriving modules are loaded. Consider it a "plug and play" method of passenger loadeing. It should take no more time to change passenger loads than removing the freight in the cargo section of the plane.
I fly a lot, and we're almost uniformly sitting waiting for the luggage to be loaded... On short haul anyway.
Deleted
Sex (sex)
Aan (on)
Boord (board)
En (and)
Niks (nothing)
Anders (else)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Skimming through the headlines for the day, I honestly read this article as "Strict water boarding would get planes in the sky faster." Sadly, I didn't even flinch and went to read the Chemistry article first instead.
Insert witty comment here
If they printed some kind of temporary bar code at the first checkpoint, it could serve as a "just for today" ID that would combine your ID and boarding pass, revealing nothing more than an index number. Slap it on your clothing and let the subsequent checkpoints scan it to their heart's content -- all the way to the gate. That places a high level of trust in that first checkpoint, but it might make sense to take a really close look at the ID and verify the boarding pass ONCE instead of a quick glance twice at security and again at the gate.
Ramp controller: "Droid X6 - use your superior intellect and get those passengers onto the plane as fast as possible"
Droid X6: "Yessir"
(minces up pax and pumps slurry onboard at high speed)
Droid X6: "Objective complete sir"
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Stand on your number or get on last.
The tickets are scanned, if you're out of order you're shunted into a hold box (where everyone can look at you and you board last after stragelers.
If people can find their seat number I expect they could find their square.
Kids are the single most annoying thing in airtravel. They should not be allowed on the plane, perhaps they can travel while duct-taped to the outside of the hull?
Given the herd mentality of people, any attempts to put some structure around the boarding process are doomed to failure. People, as individuals, may be smart but throw them together at an airline gate, they collectively become dumb as stumps. You can paint circles on the carpet outside the gate with the seat assignments stenciled in them and tell everyone to stand on the spot corresponding to their seat assignments and they'll still get it wrong. People will arrive late or children will be separated from their parent or some asshole will simply refuse to cooperate.
The other problem in boarding is carry-on luggage. This will always cause huge delays in boarding as people struggle to find space in the overhead bins and to cram their oversized suitcase into a space half the size. Eliminating carry-on would solve this but would cause mass insurrection.
Nope. I just don't think it is possible to organize efficient boarding given the current way the process works and given the nature of people. It sure would be nice though.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
> That would mean everyone lines up, row 25 first.
I actually flew on an airline in Europe that tried that. It was a huge disaster.
Many of the back row people put their luggage in the front row overheads so they wouldn't have to carry it as far. That meant that front row people had to shuttle their luggage more toward the back of the plane. This was bad enough, but when it came time to retrieve their luggage it was complete chaos.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
This proposal has some serious unintended consequences. Many people really prefer aisle seats. If one's odds of getting an aisle seat are increased by arriving late, I forsee many travellers deliberately reaching security late. Personally, I really like window seats. Once I have a confirmed seat assignment, I get grouchy if I don't have my window. It's the little boy in me that likes to watch the scenery go by.
WestJest flights out of Vancouver, BC, Canada will frequently use dual-door boarding. They have Y-shaped jetways that have two arms to attach to the plane.
They do free-for-all boarding, and you go either front or back depending on your row number. Fast and simple.
All children below age 10 should be part of checked baggage.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
I travel anywhere from once to three times a month and have been doing so for awhile so I am pretty familiar with the whole delays because of boarding issues.
First off, boarding by row number is a good idea but the problem is you will ALWAYS have these idiots who insist that they need to board first before anyone else. They don't listen to the gate agent (who you can barely understand at times over those damn PA's) and are insistent that they go on first or that since they are already at the counter, they should just be allowed to board.
I think the gate agents should do a hell of a lot more to prepare the folks for boarding. Tell them that if they intend to put their jacket above, to take it off before they get on the plane. Tell them they need to put their bag or whatever in the above bin, or below quickly to help with the boarding.
Telling folks they can't have carry-on bags is retarded. There is no way in hell I would trust a baggage handler with my laptop and I know I'd lose my luggage and have no clothes for the first day of meeting a new client. Forget it. Besides, those of us who do travel a lot have status with the airline and board first, or have traveled enough that we know exactly what we need to do to get out of the way so the plane can take off.
It irritates me to no end to see someone standing in the isle just casually taking their coat off or whatever knowing full well they are holding the line up. Get your shit off, pack it away, and get the hell out of the way of everyone else. I know because of my travel experience that I need to get my carry-on stuff in the bin quickly, and into my seat quickly, so that we can leave quickly.
The problem is that most of the time every flight will have people who don't fly a lot and don't know the problems that come from standing around. If the agents spent a minute before pre-boarding to let folks know they need to be conscious of this stuff, I think it would help reduce, not eliminate, the problems.
And please, for fuck sakes, if you have a wheely bag, don't wheel it down the isle. Pick the damn thing up and carry it til you get to your seat and can put it away. I can't count the amount of people I have seen trying to "wheel" a bag down the isle of a CRJ and keep getting it caught on people, seats, or other things. Don't be so freaking lazy!
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
western civilization's 2nd greatest achievement...sanitation's #1, of course;-)
EVERYTHING that the airlines do is done in the worst possible way.
Disney industrial engineers have a worldwide reputation for moving people efficiently. It's a simple four step process:
1. Make the passengers wait in line for 2 hours.
2. Have them sit through mediocre two minute flight.
3. Passengers deplane in the gift shop.
4. Big Profit!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If you live in the US, EU or any other so-called developed country, last time I checked there were thousands of people waiting to get a visa or a green card to come and work for you. All you need to do is be less selfish and let them in - much cheaper than breeding and educating your own kids.
So - no, people who just want to satisfy their own biological need of reproduction should not get any additional privileges.
Every flight I've been on, we board the plane in a big rush... then sit for no less than 10 minutes waiting for.... ?? ? And I've been on many small American Eagle flights that would seem to be subject to the small/frequent/short flights. What are we waiting on for those 10 minutes? Are there some fueling and safety checks that take longer to do than boarding? If so, what is this article about?
There are ways to make everything extra security and efficient and I think this is the best:
When you check-in, you check-in yourself along with your luggage. You go into a room, strip down to your undies, pack everything away and lay down in some sort of secure capsule. The capsule monitors your health and provides you with something that knocks you out and keeps you knocked out until the end of the flight. People are placed along with their luggage onto a conveyor belt and people are stacked up in the most efficient manner. This would eliminate the need for security screening as we know it, and is only slightly more invasive/intrusive as it is today.
Yay!
Now you are beginning to understand American foreign policy.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
United has been doing the "board the window seats first" for a bit now, at least the flights I've taken with them since last October. For families, it's actually fairly easy, because you get 2 or 3 seats together and board all of them together. For more than 3 in a family, you still can end up with one adult per 'n' children, so unless you've got a really big family, this won't be much of an issue either (and the exception in any event).
But the funny thing is that what TFA states is (at least to me) fairly obvious, having been a frequent flier for 5 years. It's really obvious to anyone who files with any sort of regularity that there are better ways to board passengers on a plane and what those ways would be.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
I think you missed the point. You agree that the existence of children now is something you will benefit from after you retire. Yet you don't want to suffer any inconvenience now for this future benefit.
Sorry, you don't get something for nothing. If you decide to not have any children of your own, then to reap the future benefits from other people having children you end up subsidizing them now.
Not that it wouldn't be grand if everyone could just pay for their own kids, and I'm very much in favor of anything that makes that possible. But in the end, the people who can fully afford to pay for their own kids just aren't having enough kids to keep the economy going, so it's in society's interest to encourage others to have kids too.
It would be a mess if you told passengers to line themselves up row-by-row, seat-by-seat. But what if after you scanned your boarding pass in line, you stepped into a series of gates that opened and closed to shift each passenger to the right section in line. Since families sitting together would tend to scan in together, you could keep them all shunting through the same set of gates. I'm imagining a sort of plinko-machine type system that sorts people to the right place in line.
:-)
Practical? Probably not. But the airline that implements it would score major geek points in my book.
It strikes me that the boarding times are not the bottleneck. I fly at least four times a year and after boarding the plane usually sits there for at least another 30 minutes while the bags are hurled onto the conveyor running up to the cargo bay or while the caterers load up something that they try to pass off as a meal. Why should the paying customer have to be herded around by the airlines quicker when the rest of the process is so slow?
Good point, not many people are aware of the extra few inches of legroom you get in an exit row seat. You usually even have enough extra room to fully open a laptop and type comfortably.
What you want to avoid is the row directly in front of an exit, since the seats in front of an exit don't recline. In planes with two adjacent exit rows (such as the 757), always pick the rear one. If rows 17 and 18 are exits, 16 and 17 won't recline, so pick 18.
It would help if the attendants actually monitored passengers and enforced the rules. If I am at the front of a plane I invariably have no room for my luggage because people at the back stashed theirs up front. It isn't even because the back is full. I've been boarded first and watched people ditch their luggage at the first open bin, presumably to not have to carry it all the way back.
Naturally these passengers are usually the ones complaining loudest about how long it is taking people to board, while those up front have no space for their luggage and need to find an alternative.
I mean, come on. Loading any empty container from the least accessible to the most accessible area when empty isn't trivially obvious? Did these people fail the square-blocks in round-hole test when they were kids?
Planes aren't loaded funny because the airlines are clueless; planes are loaded funny because the airlines are in the business of creating artificial social classing so that they can generate privileges, and then charge for them. Treat yourself and fly first class one time; you'll see what I mean. There's no other reason for first class to exist, in the sense of getting from here to there. Though I will say that first class in 1970 was a lot more "first" than it is today, what with other social changes that have transpired.
Likewise, old folk, pregnant women, children and invalids aren't loaded first because it is more efficient, they are loaded first because of social pressures (and accompanying income hits) that would arise if they were not given special treatment.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Rather than having the gate people be more strict, what about starting with the overhead bins locked and having the flight attendants unlock them as the rows are called.
That way, people near the front of the plane don't have an incentive to try to get on early and block the aisle. If they want to put something overhead, they'll have to wait their turn; and they know when they get there, space will be available. By making the sections smaller (say 30 as opposed to 6) you could incentivize people into behavior that is fairly close to strict row ordering.
It could be implemented within a week and airlines could even experiment with only a few flights at first to work out the kinks.
I seem to recall that a number of airlines were now using the "Flying V", which actually does address all these problems in a manner that works. The idea is that you assign a "V" of seats (i.e. deepest row is near the isle, nearer rows are closer to the window until you run out of columns). It has been shown to be *much* faster than other methods, although obviously the whole thing breaks down if people don't board in the specified order.
sigs are a waste of space
Would someone please explain to me how having a no screaming section is different than having a no smoking section?
We have laws against loud stereos (>100 feet audible). No shirt, no shoes, no service is common.
Aren't people with screaming children asked to leave the library?
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Because kids being, you know, kids (and not adults), lack a few of the traits that adults have (like being able to cope with stress without screaming), and also cannot be considered fully responsible for their actions (unlike adults).
If you're such a genius and figure out how to stop a colicky 7 month-old from screaming (big bonus points for not using a gag, soundproof box, or duct tape), then you should write a book about it. I'm sure it would make you rich enough to be able to charter your own, kid-free flights for the rest of your life in just a couple of weeks.
And that's where the problem lies: CLEAR THE FUCKING AISLES!
If you need to put a carryon in the overhead bin, fine. But get out of the aisle while you do it, so others can get past you.
Oh, and shoot the people who don't understand that "Rows 27 to 33" does not include Row 15.
...laura
People can just hold their bags on their laps for a few minutes. Then when everyone is aboard, the bins unlock and people can stow their bags. This would avoid the traffic jam in the aisles that occurs during loading while people struggle to lift and stuff bags.
It would also avoid the problem of the weenies that stow their bags in the front despite having a seat aft.
Perhaps labeling bin space to match seat numbers would help, too. If someone else's stuff is in your space, that stuff gets moved under the owner's feet, is gate checked, or is left on the jetway...
Last year I boarded a FULL 747 to Korea. It was mostly full of Korean people, but some other including myself (an American). Naturally the 1st and business classes board first.
Then for the coach class, they just announced that it was boarding.. no rows or anything.
Everyone was just polite and most importantly when people found their seats, they made an effort to first allow those behind them to pass, rather than just block the isle. The entire plane loaded w/out any problems in about 20 minutes.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I have checked luggage 6 times in the last 3 years.
Airlines have lost said luggage (defining 'lost' as 1 or more days to return it to me) 4 times.
Thats split between 3 different airlines.
Yeah. That reputation is 'history'.
Not.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
"More Doors"
More then two words:
Create a system with doors on each side across from each other, and load from each of the 2 plus doors.
Load by section.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Looks like we've parallelized the procedure for analyzing sorts.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
These changes are not of trivial importance to airlines. Saving 30 seconds on each flight adds up very quickly.
PS While I'm on the topic of things someone should do: Farecast.com or Sidestep.com should add in an environmental impact estimate to each flight, so when you're buying a flight, you can compare the environmental impact of a multi-leg flight with one that goes directly.
Isn't the whole point of checking in the act of, well...checking in? Indicating that you are present and ready for 'XYZ'? Otherwise why not just assign the "A" to the ticket when it's purchased, and not have check-in at all? Or assume that people check-in when they buy their ticket?
Just drives me crazy...
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I think you're quoting Richard Branson. The correct quote, if memory serves, was actually:
Questioner "Mr Branson, how can someone become a millionaire?"
Branson "It's easy. Just become a billionaire, then buy an airline."
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
As noted elsewhere in the comments, who cares about getting ON? How about the airlines work on getting us OFF their damn planes faster? They couldn't open another door (even if it is down a stairs, or uses the food-loading ramp)? WTF??
And you'd think they'd care. They don't make any money from having the people stand on the plane, and the 10 extra minutes they don't have people standing on their plane is 10 extra minutes they could be cleaning, reloading, or getting some passengers to their connecting flights, which they need, since the damn flight arrived late anyway.
I began working as an IT contractor in 2006, and have lived in Key West, Florida and now the Washington, DC area. I live in northeast Florida, so I fly a lot. The airlines I use most frequently are Southwest and US Airways.
Southwest uses a method for boarding that's based on when you check in. It used to be pretty simple. The earlier you check in, the greater a chance you had to get on the A line (of A, B and C). The problem was that even with an A pass, you had to get to the airport early and camp out on your letter's line to get on early.
Southwest recently changed their boarding methods. I guess they got sick of people camping out on the floor of their gate areas or fighting over who was on line first, or whether sitting in the seats next to the line meant you were actually in the line. They began adding group numbers to the boarding pass letter. You would then line up, one letter at a time, in the group that included your number (usually in five-digit increments). This caused general havoc at the gate because people are stupid and don't listen to the detailed instructions provided by the gate attendant.
Hell, I was made a member of the Southwest "A Team" for all the flying I did...yet my boarding group number was never higher than 15.
US Airways does their boarding in a way that was mentioned in the original post: they load the plane by "zones" with the window seats first, then the middle seats, then the aisles. Of course, on their jumbos, first class gets on first, and people who need "assistance" also get priority.
The loading bottleneck is simple...it's because everyone loads through the same frickin' hatch through the same jetway.
In the now-thousands of miles I have flown in the last two years, I have been unable to find anyone who can explain why the airlines (or more likely, the aircraft manufacturers) don't have MULTIPLE DOORS ON THE AIRCRAFT.
Think of it...you can still have your Jetway for the first class and handicapped/child/assistance crowd...they're nearly always going to sit near the front of the plane anyway. But why not roll a couple of old-fashioned access ladders up to the center (aft of the wings) and rear of the plane, add a couple of doors, and have people load based on the section of the aircraft where their seat is located. Hell, Southwest can still do their open seating thing...find a ladder, get on, grab a seat.
They could also cut loading time by more than half by doing one other simple thing: just eliminate the overheads. Make it a rule: if you cannot fit it under the seat, you MUST check it. I have one of these. I can carry three days worth of clothing, my laptop and sundry other stuff, and it fits nicely (and tightly) under the seat. Most clowns carry the bigger roll-around bags that take up a ton of space and often barely fit in the overhead.
Think about the one thing that holds every other passenger up when exiting an aircraft. Right: the moron who jammed a rhino-sized roll-around into the overhead, and now needs the entire crew to help him unwedge it. While everyone else behind him has to stand there and wait.
I guess this was more of a sore subject than I thought...
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
It'll balance out, since the cubster in front of you, will act like a nice large stay-puff pillow/airbag, and will absorb the impact
..........FULL STOP.
Because parents are not adequately supported to make child rearing a costless decision, child rearing absolutely has a cost factor considered. Even if it doesn't affect Have children vs. no children, is certainly impacts having another child...
The economy doesn't chug along just fine, the entire social security disaster is because when it was created, it was assumed that people just "have children" and that that was constant. The slight issue from people living longer would be easy to handle assuming productivity, a slow increase in retirement ages, and other tweaks. The complete collapse the the children/woman numbers have caused the MASSIVE increase in retiree:taxpayer ratio that has made it unstable.
The economy depends on growth, which is growth in population * growth in production. The childless tend to complain that they have to "subsidize" the child rearing people by paying for education, parks, etc. that they don't use. It ignores the fact that society subsidizes child births because it receives a net positive.
The childless free ride on the system, because they don't contribute back one of the critical resources for future development. One way to compensate for this is in the tax code... the child tax credit is an attempt to bring costs from parents to society as a whole... this has the net effect of pushing the burden onto the childless a bit, which is no doubt noticed.
Social Security, however, is a massive wealth transfer from parents to the childless, since the system rewards you for work put in (that was given to your grandparent's generation), but is paid for by current payers. Net effect, if you do not have children, you are benefiting from the labor of the children of others.
If you think that it goes along fine, look into the issues that Japan and most of Europe are facing. Europe is facing an anti-immigrant backlash because the only way to prop up their economies was to import LOTS of new workers, since their country isn't doing it. France went through MASSIVE efforts to get child birth rates up, and is now (along with the US) among the only developed nations with a greater than 2.1 child:woman ratios necessary for population maintenance.
These shifting social standards are also where the "marriage penalty" comes from. The system assumes that married people will have a primary (or sole) breadwinner, which means that DINKs (double income, no kids) pay a higher tax than two single people, which essentially discourages marriage, not a good thing, and dual-income familes OFTEN pay more than Head of Household + Single would pay.
last time i flew was when i returned from recife (northeast) to sao paulo. at the gate, after going through security, they asked people with seats in front of the plane to form one line, people in the back to form another and pregnant women, elders and people with children in front of everyone.
worked like a charm.
What ? Me, worry ?
yummeeana donut!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
would be a whole lot more fun!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Plane freight is loaded with modular bins, so why not do the same for passengers? You'd hop in your seat module, kinda like getting into a rollercoaster car, then get rolled into the plane when it is ready and rolled off the other end when you arrive. Just like the freight bins, these could be consistent sizes/shapes/mounting points making it easier to cater to different planes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The disorder caused by too much carry on baggage and no place to put it is the real reason it's taking longer to board planes. If this is fixed, then and only then is it worth thinking about boarding order.
A few years ago, I took a trip and checked my bag. On the way there, they lost the bag and I didn't get it back until two days later. On the way back, they somehow punched a hole the size of a silver dollar in it. I've done all I can to avoid checking bags ever since.
Avoiding the wait at the carousel is pretty important too, though. I don't know how the process works, but it seems ridiculous that passengers can make it to the carousel 15 minutes before their luggage. What the hell takes so long?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
THE best way is to load everyone into a flask. Then, load the flasks similar to SH-61B-type side-launched sonobuoy canisters. Or, UAR (All-Up Rounds) stowage.
This way, farters suffocate on their own fart. Burpers on their own burp. Each flask would have drinking and urination tubes, butt for bowel movements, Immodium can be tube fed. Anyone prematurely vacating their tube and walking about in the aisles gets the Nanahara Shuya treatment (whacked on the head with a truncheon by a mask-wearing in-flight attendant.
The benefit of horizontal or UAR stowing is that if there is an in-flight issue, or mid-air collision, as many flasks as possible would be ejected or jettisoned, ideally with their own retros and chutes. Retros would have to be of non-inflammable/non-burn-through for up to 1 minutes within the passenger compartment. Hell, why not even install RTB (return to base) retros that coordinate with as many ejected canisters as possible to enhance SAR (Search And Rescue) efforts. Even better, equip each canister with a transponder so that in the even of an IFE (In-Flight Emergency) leading to jettisoning of canisters, then they would be tracked by satellites of any nation. Yeh, equip them with EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons).
Every flask would have to have an LCD, possibly built into the durable liner. Each would have a hose washdown connector to deal with in-flight shitters. Each could be equipped with rotation servos for the wackos who want to experience Great America or Six Flags (whomever owns the parks these days) in the sky.
Since Southwest has a sense of humor, they could order "Vinculums" (Google Star Trek, Borg Vinculum) and design these as regeneration alcoves -- except, PAX can't check out. Then, allow, or force, all unruly passengers to communicate through near-hematoma inducing multiplexing brain-coalescers. Good passengers get less noise. Bad ones have to struggle to aid in the silence.
Now, embarking and debarking could be sped up to about take about only 10 minutes.
Occupants would pay different prices for horizontal, angled, and vertical emplacement.
In the event of mid-air collisions, well, dying would be totallly tooobyooluhr. Those with fears can request specially-modified canisters that deploy wings like the Tomahawk cruise missile, or drogue chutes. Now, anyone (say, alcoholics) in a RAM (Rolling-Airframe Missile) will be all washed up on spin cycle if ejected for any reason.
This isn't ROCKET science. Well, not until PAX get jettisoned...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
SH-61B should be SH-60B/some variant...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Generally, I would pick on first class, thoughtlessly, but when you think about it, doesn't first class USUALLY have only 2-seats abreast, vice 3, on each side of the aisle? And, in first class, the rows are shorter, meaning that there is still less of a chance that 1st class pax are going to hold things up TOO much.
What the damned airlines need to do is load pax at TWO ends of the plane, OR...
IN the MIDDLE, but file pax in by area, but fire-fighter-aboard-ship style: ZIPPER FASHION.
Forward area pax file in on that side of the jetway, aft area pax file in on THAT side of the jetway. As you enter the aircraft, peel off and head in your designated direction.
Forward-most pax file in first, aft-most next, and middle-area pax last. Do the revers for exit, unless the gateway provides two jetways, either fore and aft, or one each side of the fuselage. But, the damned airports don't want to factor this into long-term costs, feasible security designs, etc. Or, maybe they DID, but rejected it in favor of the status quo, as in maybe thee airlines want to save on door maintenance costs?
This alone could cut the loading time in half.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
For population studies, you don't look at childless adults, you look at childless women. The number of childless women has historically been around 20%-25% (for a variety of biological/cultural reasons) but has climbed rapidly since the 70s and is now 40%. To maintain a population neutral rate of 2.1 children/woman with a 60% fertility rate, the average number of children/child bearing woman would have to be 3.5. We have created a cultural ideal of 2, it would be tremendously beneficial for their to be a government goal of increasing that "ideal" family size to 3 or 4. Right now we ARE over 2.1, because while White Christian Protestants/Catholics are under 2, White Evangelicals, Black and Hispanic birthrates are well over 2.1.
So America doesn't have a population crisis, but it's white majority is losing it's majority by not having children, which of course results in the racist backlash you're seeing as the culture shifts to accommodate the people actually living and reproducing in the country. Also, since children under 18 have no vote, and people under 30 are largely disenfranchised compared to those over 60 (voting patterns, not victimization), the population of elderly White Protestants aren't voting for leaders that understand the new American population of young Evangelical, Black, and Hispanic America. It also raises the question of how willing these young Black and Hispanic workers are going to be to support a growing social security system to support the white Baby Boomer population that they have no relationship to other than inheriting their country since Baby Boomers bought expensive homes and cars instead of having sufficient children to replace themselves and grow.
I'm all fine with supporting children, What I don't like is paying 26% of my salary every month to subsidizes rich blue haired old ladies second home in the Hamptons and frequent trips to Europe. Particularly when I will NEVER get the same benefits.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Four points:
- It's not age discrimination as was alluded to earlier, it's behavior discrimination, which IS legal.
- It doesn't work on an airplane, unless you were to build a sound-proof divider on the airplane (Third-class anyone?).
- It appears to work in libraries (quiet please) and restaurants (no smoking, shoes, shirt) just fine.
- I wasn't saying that all children can be quieted all of the time. You're right, it is very nearly impossible to quiet a baby.
It seems to me that parenting has been going downhill for a while. My parents did not let me scream unless injured since I was 5 years old (or earlier, I can't remember farther back than that). I cringe when I see 10 year old children screaming in stores and the parents do nothing about it.
Here's an idea: Create a "storm simulator" to replicate the conditions of an airplane flying in a storm: Lightning flashes, thunder booms, lurching, swaying seat, lower air pressure, and then if the child or baby continues making noise for more than 1 minute afterwards then they won't be allowed on non "family-friendly" flights. When it's not being used for testing children it can be used (with appropriate video and or gaming controls) to kill time before a flight by adults.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
the end of (gummint-sanctioned) slavery...we're just a scourge upon mother earth;-}
I think the wait is mostly due to people with overhead baggage. If you let others board first then other people like me could simply go to our seats, sit down and open a book or magazine. Then let the overheaders in and wait 30 minutes while they block the aisles for each other. Make them exit the plane last also, I think the rest of the plane could empty in about two minutes. If you lined up everyone without overhead baggage by row and sent them all onto the plane it would be boarded in no time flat. You could even line the others up by row and it would take less time since they wouldn't be blocking the fast passengers. To maximize efficiency there should be preferential treatment so that overheaders sat on one side of the plane so the fast people didn't have to move over them to get out. They could still put their baggage on either side so it wouldn't be a weight problem.
Once rows 15 and higher are in line, the flight attendant could then ask for the highest-number row in the previously defined subset. In the 20-row prop planes I recently "enjoyed," they would say "Everybody in row 20, please come to the front of the line." Then they'd take those four people's boarding passes, and ask for people seated in row 19. People would board closer to strict order, but not have to think about it or be separated from their traveling companions, so the only people who complain will be those who oppose efficiency as a matter of policy. I wanted to suggest this to the flight attendants on my recent travels, but when my first connecting flight was cancelled I decided not to provide any useful information to that airline or its employees.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..