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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.'"
I never even understood why you would want to board the plane first in first class. You lose your freedom of movement sooner, and once you are seated they go ahead and file everyone else right through the first class cabin. They should just have nice reserved seating in the waiting areas for first class passengers, then board from the back of the plane forward. Even if they don't do it perfectly, it could hardly be worse than making everyone wait for the person in front of them to finish stuffing crap in the overhead bins before even going back to their seat.
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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Exactly. This study is taking an assembly-line operations approach to a process involving humans, who might be late, have special needs (e.g. "I can't lift this 300-lb carry-on into the overhead, please help"), have incomplete paperwork; all kinds of variables are at play. The failures of such an approach should be self-evident in real-world scenarios.
Also, what difference would this truly make? Airports already maximize the number of takeoffs from multiple gates. The plane has no choice but to take off at time X, regardless of how annoying the boarding process is. Any successful implementation of speeding up this process means that everybody waits on the plane longer versus in the seating area at the gate.
Focus on the ridiculous security procedures, that's where I get pissed off when traveling.
why? forty-two.
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....
The main reason is overhead bin space. Somehow, a fair segment of they flying public labors under the belief that it is correct and proper to stow their baggage in the first available overhead bin. Board late in first class (assuming an aircraft boarding through a door forward of that cabin) and you're likely to find a fraction of the overhead bin space occupied by F passenger bags, and the remainder occupied by coach passenger bags.
The secondary reason is that notwithstanding a planeload of passengers filing past you, the F cabin is still a more pleasant place to be than the gate area.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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
"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
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What difference? Profits. Southwest is the only profitable US airline and has been for decades. One of the key differences is that Southwest optimizes the hell out of their turnaround procedures, and although they suck on many of the airline industry's traditional metrics (average used capacity per flight, for example) their planes spend a lot longer in the air because they spend a lot LESS time on the ground. Planes are not making money while they're on the ground waiting for people to be seated.
Why should you care if the airlines are making a profit? The more lucrative the industry, the more companies enter the field, the more competition, and the better prices and service we get. Maybe not right away, but in the long run we do like the companies that provide services to us to minimize their costs.
You do realize that if his row had already boarded, he could just simply walk on right? The only one made any later is him.
:-)
Loading the front rows first is absolutely ridiculous. While rows 1-5 fumble around trying to cram their stuff in the overhead compartments, rows 6-10 just have to wait until they figure it out, then they get to fumble around with their overhead compartments while 11-15 are blocked. If you load from the back first, people can fumble with their luggage all at the same time, and no isles ever get blocked in the process. It's just common sense, and I am very glad that I am not the only one that is dumbfounded every time they see this. I do, however, think it's funny that someone managed to get this published in nature
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.
I'm an occasional traveler - maybe 10 times a year. Still a lot more frequent than the general public I think, and I know my way around flying. I agree with you wholeheartedly, and would like to add that this isn't just a problem in the cabin, but also at check-in.
Yes, you know the ones. The big family of 6 clearly taking the plane for the first time in their lives, who saunter up to the check-in counter, no ID in hand, no documents in hand, and then spend the next 10 minutes digging through luggage for the documents they should've known they'd need in the first place.
Seriously people. Have your luggage in order, make sure it's not overweight AT HOME, have you boarding pass printed, and your drivers license/passport/what have you in-hand. I do, and I'm in and out of that check-in procedure in 30 seconds FLAT.
Darn it, you beat me to it.
I wasn't going to suggest a crane though. I thought you could put the seating area on overhead rails like factories have. Match those suckers up, and drive the passenger module into the plane at 3g with a linear motor.
The most practical though would probably be to take the weight hit and put doors every six rows. Redesign the jetway for multiple access points and load all at once. The exit rows can have fold-away seats so that space won't be wasted.
Only cheap-ass cars require you to load everyone in from the front, and even they have two doors for it. Why are planes so much chintzier.
Also, turn the damn seats around. Sure, it's cool to be facing the way you're going, but you can't see out the front, anyway, and studies have shown that the seats reversed position is significantly more survivable in a disaster.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
""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.
I'm one of those elite passengers, for 9 years in a row. In my experience, we are not the problem. We know what will fit into the overhead bin and under the seat, know how to get carry-on's stowed quickly, and to step out of the aisle as soon as possible to allow people to get past -- because we have repeatedly had to stand and wait for someone that does otherwise. I get upgraded to first class occasionally, but otherwise I'm usually one of the first people into the plane after first class had boarded, and invariably I find all of them seated and the aisle is clear.
My least favorite time to travel is near the holidays, because that's when you get the people that fly once or twice a year. They stand in the aisle while they take off their coat, try to stuff an oversize department store shopping bag into the overhead bin, and argue over who is going to sit next to the window. Or they insist that their 4-year old lead them down the aisle, who stops at every row to ask "is this it?", and bumps every person sitting in an aisle seat with his/her Barney backpack.
I won't bother to describe the incredibly clueless people I see at the security checkpoint near the holidays (and no, I'm not talking about the TSA).
No other major airline has operated in the black in decades. They ALL end up filing for bankruptcy. Everything leading up to it is just funny-money accounting.
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.
I guess it would be impossible to just let the late person go in the next boarding phase. It would also be absurd to use the system, but allow parents to board with their young children. After all, the solution is being proposed by a physicist, and we all know that the stuff they come up with never pans out in the real world.
Stick to your Big Bangs and your quantum tunneling, Einsteins, and leave airport management to the people who brought us shoe-fetish security theater.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Why not have the waiting/seating area resemble the plane layout. The people can sit down where they're supposed to sit on the plane. Then you have the seat number plastered all over so people can get their seat number unconsciously ingrained in their head. Then the stewardess comes along and says "Seat 29 go ahead....Seat 28 get onboard...." All the way down. It doesn't have to resemble the plane seats. Just the layout.
There. i solved it. Thanks to your removable seat theory.
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).
No it isn't. All SouthWest has is a way to keep the lines shorter. Once you get on the plane, you can sit wherever you like. Of course, if you don't get an "A" ticket, you can kiss your chance for a window seat goodbye. But you still end up with the dork who holds up the entire line of people boarding so that he can get a seat near the front while he takes off his jacket and digs in his carry-on bag for his MP3 player before putting it above.
Me? I'm more of a "Coach-jerk". I check in everything I can. I board quickly, usually with an "A" ticket. I go for the window seat, my laptop goes on the floor in front of me, my jacket goes into the seat next to me. I pull my hat down, lean back, and start reading.
Usually, I get the seat next to me empty, though if anybody asks, I'm nice about moving my jacket. Coach is so much nicer when you have a nice, empty seat next to you to park your crap!
But when we get off, that's where everybody does the stupid - they all rush off the plane so that they can stand for 20 minutes at the baggage claim. Me? I wait until EVERYBODY is off the plane, reading my book or whatever. When *everybody* is OFF the plane and the stewardess is wondering what to say to me, that's when I get off. A nice, easy walk to the baggage claim, and I get there right as the bags first start popping out every time.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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(Something about having most of the airframe be doors is probably the weakness of this idea)
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No need for that.
Boeing 747F : http://airways.cz/images/novinky/china-airlines-747f-prague.jpg
Antonov An-124 : http://www.loral.com/inthenews/iPSTAR_1-HiRes.jpg
Lockheed C-5 Galaxy : http://www.512aw.afrc.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/050611-F-9171L-135.jpg
Which sounds to me (I am not a pilot, etc) like a good argument against the hub system. Centralized airport hubs are the bottleneck in most cases. Just have bad weather over Atlanta or Chicago and watch the "Delayed" and "Cancelled" signs light up. Decentralized airports seem to be the answer to me to really speed things up.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
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
Fully agreed -- the biggest pain when flying is the "amateur traveller" who does not think ahead ("Oh, I need my passport again, I have it right here in this envelope in the bottom of my suitcase - just give me moment to unpack"). Furrfu.
I used to think they should get separate boarding queues, by now I think they should get a separate airport.
I have a good reason for wanting to get to my seat first - luggage. I always obey the carry-on luggage rules, but I often transport delicate and valuable stuff. As a result, I need my overhead space.
:D
Sadly, many people do NOT follow the rules, and unless I get onto the plane fast, I often have no overhead space to stow my gear, meaning that it's out of sight for most of the flight.
This is why I always book seats at the back of the plane
The first airport has just been rebuilt with walkways but no planes are using them! I would hazard a guess that the airlines told the airport to get lost because it was faster to board / unboard with steps instead.
I think part of the point, if not most of it, has been missed through limited explanation. I think there is some potential here and some added advantages. What if you had a Mock Plane in the waiting area which had all the seats in specific order layed out on the carpet? That has the advantage of lots of access points because there are no walls like planes so getting into that seating arrangement would be trivial. Moving from that seating area to the actual plane would consist of only the ticket check.
The added advantage would be able to get some idea ahead of time of how your trip is going to be. If you are sitting in the middle row of a group of college cheerleaders you might want to skip off to the bathroom to freshen up a little. If you are sitting next to the classic 300 pound salesman you might want to skip off to the bathroom/bar and medicate yourself so you don't have to suffer as much.
But seriously, that would accommodate a large part of the problems with people who arrive at the last minute or have heavy luggage that they can't lift. At least there is a chance of seeing it ahead of time. As for the guy who arrives late -- put him dead last in the boarding process if his seat has passed. But if he can still stage in the seating area in the terminal, then he's not late.
Sir, have you ever tried to organize a mob including 4 children on a trip? I've done it with in-laws, and it's very awkward. The priority is keeping everyone safe, including the kids and innocent bystanders. The paperwork often gets disorganized in the resulting chaos.
Well, yes, but the limitations of bubblesort is tied to the assumption that there's only thread working on the problem - in the boarding queue you have n threads, for a problemsize of n, which eliminates the square execution time of bubblesort - the boarding queue bubblesort will execute in O(n), which is pretty close to optimal, given the overhead of explaining a more complicated algorithm, which has the limiting factor of single-threaded (the announcer) execution.
Yes that rarefied quantum tunnelling ... that makes semiconductors work ... that make the computer you typed this on work ... ..and you do realise that most physicists work with this kind of mundane problem as their job ...?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
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.
Come on people ... forget the size check you try to slip your bag into, if YOU CAN'T LIFT IT, IT's TOO DAMN BIG!
Sheez!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
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Different industries take different times to build capacity, and the reaction of prices and profits vary accordingly. Anyone with a lot of money can start an airline very quickly; there are many airplanes not being flown. Getting a new source of petroleum on line is a multiyear process.
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