Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Letting slower passengers board airplane first is faster, study finds

arstechnica.com

287 pointspseudolus496 comments

I'm also convinced that we exit the plane in the worst way possible. We basically do it row-by-row: as the people in front of them leave, people in a row get up, get their bags, start walking down the line, and this cascades up the plane. The problem is that there is very little parallelism: while people in the next row to leave are getting their bags, no one is exiting the plane.

This is similar to a stall in a processor pipeline. We want to avoid stalls, which mean that we want people exiting the plane constantly. A column approach would work much better: people in the aisle get their bags before the doors open, and start leaving as soon as it does. As columns drain, the next column can get their bags and start to leave. This approach keeps people leaving constantly, while also keep the aisle constantly populated. Yes, the person in the last column in the back row still leaves last, but I claim they will leave sooner. (edit: Thinking about it more, I actually think the people in the last column in the front row leave last. If you're in the back row, second column, you can stand up as soon as the person in the first column in front of you has started walking out. After the first column to leave, people will exit in reverse order because the openings will appears back-to-front. Trying to maintain front-row "fairness" will just result in a period of time where no one is in the aisle.)

The reason we do the row-by-row method, I think, is that our sense of fairness is influenced by who we're looking at and proximity. We look forward, and we feel that the people closer to the door "should" leave first because they're closer, and we're looking at them, so we feel bad if we hold them up. But by doing the row-by-row method, we're holding up everyone behind us, but we don't look at them as much.

I don't know how to enforce a column-by-column exit. Airlines can enforce how we get on the plane because they control, person at a time, who enters the plane. How we exit the plane is more cultural, and while an airline could certainly try to ask people to exit this way, it's much harder to make it happen.

Also, people like to sit next to people they know such as family. A column approach sounds more effective, but it would split up people traveling together.

Very good point. And unlike boarding, trying to handle exceptions first or last doesn't really work because people are physically blocked from leaving their row. I've figured we'd never do this for cultural reasons, it's just something I ruminate over while traveling alone, staring at the empty aisle of a half-full plane.

Seems to me the real problem is people in the same row who don't board together, since frequently someone has to squeeze back into the isle and block things until their neighbor is seated. Airlines know who booked together, couldn't they optimize the boarding groups flight by flight? If some people booked together and sit together, give them all the earliest boarding group that any individual member would have had.

Excluding children, for whom exceptions can be made, I'm not sure I understand why this is much of a problem. Does it really matter if you walk fifty feet without being next to your travel partner?

It might do, you are often not allowed to wait around as you walk from the plane to the terminal building and to passport control. You may be in different places in the queue. Now say one of you goes through to the first place you can wait, perhaps after passport control and before baggage collection. The other person doesn't turn up. You don't know why? Wait another 10 minute? Did they go through baggage area? Passport issues? Where do you meet now? You can't help them. Granted mobile phones, but not being split up is easier.

Now friends sometimes end up in different seats, and you can probably get away with waiting somewhere, maybe on the plane itself to meet up, but if everyone is in the same boat it might be chaos to do that, and there is more incentive for airport staff to stop you.

Well sure, I don't think anyone was suggesting that no waiting area is provided to meet back up til you hit the sidewalk. I thought it'd be clearly implied that there would be a spot to reunite after exiting the jetway

Even from a purely utilitarian perspective where efficiency is the only concern, if you force groups to separate then you are just going to clog up the jet bridge with people waiting for their loved ones to exit the plane. If there's no jet bridge and the passengers are getting on a bus to be taken to the terminal it would cause even more chaos.

I don’t quite understand the desire for friends or family traveling together to exit the airplane at the same time and hold up others as a result.

Airports have waiting areas between arrival gate and passport control, probably precisely to let passengers traveling together catch up with each other. Even the worst possible airport would have a bathroom, and toilet entrances are implicitly a waiting (queueing) areas.

Unfortunately, introducing any sort of rigid structure and order into airplane disembarkation process sounds like an impossible task.

Someone upthread had the very sensible suggestion that if you need to leave with other people in your row, you should wait until everyone else has left the plane.

This sounds like it might be faster, and I might like it for solo business trips, but getting on/off with my family is not optional for me.

Assuming most multi-passenger groups feel similarly, and assuming solo business passengers represent only ~40% of the population, the impact of such a system (which would require substantially more passenger discipline/planning) would be pretty limited.

Yeah, with this idea, people would just clog up right outside the airplane door waiting for their family. Anyone trying to get through would get some angry looks for daring to push through.

Assuming you can even split the family up. Plenty of people travel with younger kids (5 and under) and there's no way in hell that can be done safely without having the parents with them.

Maybe exceptions can be made for children?

The fastest solution is having families with children exit last. If someone wants to exit together they can do so after everyone else is gone.

That leaves people in window seats bottlenecked behind families.

Don't seat non-family members there.

And because of all the edge cases and special rules that have been established, we can see why this isn’t a practical approach.

The number of people who are traveling with families is not a trivial number of passengers.

So far we have 2 rules:

- Seat families towards the hull of the plane

- Have them exit last

I don't see a plethora of edge cases here that make this not practical. In fact, this seems very practical to me.

I have no issue with that personally but it's not always practical. eg:

- people with Window seats next to families

- occasions when younger kids have been sat for so long that they're now fidgety and causing a disturbance. With the best will in the world, sometimes physically restraining kids is just going to cause more issues then letting them disembark the plane

- if the family have large items in the overhead storage that needs removing so someone else can get their luggage. By the time you've juggled all that luggage around, the family might as well just join the queue of travellers waiting to exit

It was also mentioned that individuals should not be sat next to families but that doesn't always work when you're trying to fill capacity and/or let travellers pick their own seats (as many flight operators do).

Sadly what is academically optimum isn't always what's practical in the real world. If that were true, there would be a lot of efficiencies the human race could made from road travel to financial savings.

I'll add, as father of 1 year old who had been traveling a lot, sometimes you need to run for a connecting flight because the previous one is very late.

I usually board first with the family (required, I don't have enough hands to hold the baby and put luggages above, and my wife is not tall enough), but whenever possible I leave the plane last. It's relaxing, no one is chasing me, I can grab the bags slowly while preventing my baby from killing some one

Angry looks don't slow the line.

When people feel fairness is violated (correct or not) they will often gum up the works in protest. As an example, watch what happens when car lanes merge early, or some drives up the shoulder. Others will position to stop that.

(Note I'm not saying anything about what people on either side of this conflict SHOULD be doing, just talking about how people react to perceived unfairness.)

> getting on/off with my family is not optional for me.

Ryanair has now accustomed Europeans to travel separately from their family, so it wouldn't surprise me to see that requirement change if it drops the price.

So Ryanair will take care of my 5 year old while I fly? Sounds peaceful. Last flight she spent 2 hours trying to lay down in the middle of the aisle.

That is the best place to fully recline, she's no dummy.

Ryanair sadly don't do unaccompanied minors, but for an airline that does (and 5 seems to be the lower bound), and if flying with a partner, I've always wondered if the following would work:

Parent A flies without child on Day 1; Child is given to airline by Parent B on Day 2 and retrieved on the other end by Parent A. Parent B flies without child on Day 3.

And this is why your kid won't speak to you after age 18.

My parents used to stick me in Economy when they flew Business on long-haul from about 7 onward, and I still speak to _at least_ one of them.

I guess the inheritance could be a good reason.

It kinda makes sense, kids are smaller so they don't need as much space. We should sort passengers by size in general.

If you've got a week or two for vacation, spending six days getting there and back just so you can not fly with your own kid seems... suboptimal.

Right, I guess a flight nanny is probably easier.

Or you know..... just be a parent.

Some folks with money really are better off hiring a professional parent, if the asshole cycle is ever to be interrupted.

What's wrong with getting a babysitter? Because that's what this effectively is.

If you're upset about the money wasted on extra tickets, that's a wealth complaint not a childcare complaint.

If there are multiple flights in a day, you might be able to fit it all in one!

I feel your pain. The last flight with my 2 year old daughter, she had to be physically held in her seat because she was too old to be allowed on our laps yet also too small for the seat belt to restrain her. The moment we let go of her she intentionally slid under the belt and out of the chair!

You might want to look into a CARES harness. They are FAA approved and not very expensive. They are designed for kids weighing 22 - 44 pounds.

https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_children/

A booster might work also. Though to be honest, I wouldn't bother (my wife totally would, however).

Thanks for the recommendations. I honestly had no idea any of this was available.

When my kids were that small we would travel with one of their car seats for the plane. The car seat is restrained by the plane’s seat belt and then your child is nestled snuggly in their own car seat.

The benefits are that your kid is then in an environment they are familiar with and they can’t just wiggle out. The downside is that you now have to lug around a car seat in the terminal. Ours got stuck in an X-ray machine once. That was fun.

I assume that’s still possible, it’s been a while since we had to travel like that.

Yes, you can also put the kid in a carseat when they are under 2 if you don't want to keep them on your lap.

They make an exception for children under 12.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/useful-info/travelling-with-ch...

Ryanair has pretty much given up enforcing seat allocations. Sure, your boarding pass might say one seat number, but it's pretty much a "sit in any free seat" policy. 90% of the time when i get on the plane someone else is in my seat, so I'm forced to sit in a random seat, giving someone else the exact same issue.

The staff know that getting everyone back into the correct seats will take a massive effort, so don't bother.

My experience is that yes there's lots of shuffling around, but people politely ask others if they accept to change seats.

This is just one of many reasons that nobody should ever fly RyanAir.

The great thing about being assertive is that you get to sit in the seat you paid for.

You tell the person to get out of the seat you paid for.

I strongly prefer aisle seats. I once had a girl ask me to switch seats with her so that she could sit next to her boyfriend. Since she had a middle seat, I politely declined, explaining that I would only switch with another aisle seat. She proceeded to throw a fit, calling me an asshole, etc, etc. I paid extra (how have we even come to this?) to be able to pick my seat, I'm not going to give it up for free.

Don't let people bully you.

At some point you will either have to escalate or give up. Some people won't be convinced, and can't be badgered into obeying you, and they know that you have no recourse at all as long as they remain seated and ignore you.

If the local authority (flight attendants) won't back you up, you are at the discretion of whoever is hogging your seat. Any display of power over the other usually amounts to potentially being able to resort to violence if necessary to back up your power. The person in the seat know full well that you cannot do that without being forced to leave the plane, so they have effectively nothing to fear from you.

If the flight attendants aren't enforcing seating then I'll go plop myself down in an exit row or first class

> Ryanair has pretty much given up enforcing seat allocations.

Haven't been on a Ryanair flight for a while but this certainly didn't seem to be the case when I was flying with them regularly. Was this something that's changed very recently or maybe it's only certain routes this happens on?

There's a documentary on Netflix, I think it's called "Speed" or something because it's about fast stuff, had an episode about doing Monte Carlo simulations of plane embark / disembark sequences that were optimal. They came up with optimal boarding processes but it required individual seat assignments which was a problem for kids (not to mention a ton of explaining). I forget if Southwest's semi-randomized approach was the next best, or boarding groups - I think it was randomized.

I think you (and others in this thread) will enjoy CGP Grey's video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

I've watched that video many times. I love the video (it's excellent and hilarious), but I should mention there's one aspect of it that rubs me the wrong way. The part he says back-to-front sucks and then shows a guy on the 3rd-to-last row trying to fit in his carry-on (around like 1:04) is a somewhat disingenuous representation of what people assume the optimal solution would be. You'd think they would put a last-row window-seater first, then second-to-last row, etc., not just randomly start at row 3 aisle -- nobody ever suggests that's optimal. That's a misrepresentative strawman of the algorithm people imagine, and it's hardly surprising that it sucks.

What's the problem with that part exactly? He's showing the method which most airlines use, which is boarding by boarding class, The algorithm that they use is not ordering person by person, there's going to be randomness with who gets into line first, which is what allows for the lack of optimality. The whole point is that the current approach doesn't allow ordering person by person.

Hey. Do you have the name of the documentary? I couldn't find it here

I'm pretty sure the name was either "Speed" or "Fast" and that it was a 4-episode docuseries. This fits those characteristics but doesn't otherwise look familiar: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10287062/episodes?ref_=tt_ov_ep.... Also that says 2019, and I'm quite certain it was earlier than that. I can't find anything else either, though.

Southwest would have been my guess for the worst. Generally I see them using a 3seat-aisle-3seat configuration. The plane always fills up window and aisle seats from front to back, then only once people have explored the whole plane do they resort to a middle seat between two strangers. Everyone is basically incentivized to act as greedily as possible so it takes longer than it needs to.

>act as greedily as possible so it takes longer than it needs to

These two things aren't connected (greed and time blocking alsie). the greedy answer is to get comfortable and settled in your bubble, fast.

I am a SW FF, most of the other people on my planes are, and we get it...we move and seat quickly to allow others in. I'm guessing far better average plane etiquette than most other US airline's FFs (though all FFs are likely above average).

This. I fly Southwest whenever possible; the loading process appears to be more efficient and is certainly less chaotic than other airlines. The flight attendants are consistently the friendliest I've encountered, too.

^ This. The most chaotic part of the whole process is finding your number in the line-up to scan your boarding pass. They also set your expectations on seat-finding as you board, so if the plane is half empty or full up, you'll be able to make a good seat choice.

While the other airlines are announcing the 15th class of partner airlines rewards members being able to board and everybody's standing around watching, Southwest is loading planes.

OMG yes...I flyed United occasionally when SW doesn't makes sense for the route. I was even status matched to "Premier Platinum" for a while. I was amazed that 1. I didn't get upgrades due to the remaining levels above me, and 2. Just how long boarding is and how many special groups. Can't see the business value there.

Southwest is AMAZINGLY efficient, and driven to streamline everything. This is the reason they transformed the whole industry by turning planes around in 15 minutes when their competitors were taking hours. If Southwest is doing it, it doesn't mean it's absolutely the most efficient way, but it's probably close, and you can bet they've seriously thought about alternatives.

Speaking of efficiency, Southwest in two airports now has managed to get a 17-minute late-check and an 18-minute late-check on the same plane that I also somehow miraculously got on (and was the last person if I remember correctly). Pure magic.

Wouldn't it be optimal, assuming you don't want to sit next to someone, to pick a window/aisle toward the back of the aircraft?

Not at current load ratios. Most flights are full. Good business environment and MAXes out of service are causing this. Your best bet might be the stranded 2-seat exit row on -800s.

But better to assume you'll have a middle seater. If you stay calm it will be okay.

YMMV but my experience is southwest boards much faster than other airlines.

Really curious which documentary that was. Been trying to find it but no luck...

> but getting on/off with my family is not optional for me.

For sure. But there is a solution to this. The solution is that you and your family should stay seated, and wait a bit, for people behind you to leave.

And then once there is a big enough empty space, THEN you and your family should start getting ready to leave.

> THEN you and your family should start Gettysburg ng ready to leave

Not sure if this is a pun I didn't understand or the most ridiculous autocorrection I've seen in a while.

Lol, autocorrect...

The main factor in reboarding slowness is not how tightly people pack into line, it's when one person gets into the aisle and stops and blocks everyone

Take the Mad Max approach! Push them into the aisle! Give me speed or give me death!

   Give me speed, or 
   give them death!

FTFY

> getting on/off with my family is not optional for me

If you’re getting off with your family you should just wait for everyone else to exit first anyway unless you have a connecting flight with no time margin or something. Families are super slow to deboard planes.

If your kids are young, you should probably be allowed to board first before other travelers.

A column by column rule wouldn’t apply to you either way.

But how does a "column by column rule" not apply to everyone. If I'm in a window seat and there is a parent and child in the aisle/middle seats, I have to wait until everyone gets off?

Column by column would never work. Most people like leaving together with their friends and loved ones who are sitting next to them, regardless if they are families with children.

In a column-by-column situation if you're in a window seat you would have to wait for the two columns before to deboard anyway. The problem would be if you are in a middle seat and the person next to you is waiting for his family in the line right before yours, but that's kind of a special case anyway.

> If you’re getting off with your family you should just wait for everyone else

Uhh, no. First of all, we aren't slow, second kids have tiny bladders and third when did childless folks become such fragile babies?

They’re not babies. They just don’t get it. The totality of the commitment is lost on them.

What’s new is that they also just don’t care.

Or, as I have heard from multiple friends who have chosen not to or can't have children(due to ethical concerns or lack of money), they understand completely and expect that parents take responsibility for the commitments they made without pushing the problems onto everyone else.

>without pushing the problems onto everyone else.

Or as others call it - "common courtesy"

I don't have children but I can understand that parenting is stressful enough as it is. Why go about making it worse for them?

Not to mention that having children sits at the very base of human existence. We built societies around the plain fact that children are necessary. Only those who believe that humanity should just go extinct can argue that having children is just a personal choice.

Good for them for not wanting kids?

I’m not pushing anything into anyone. But just try to push me aside because I have kids!

My kids have just as much right to public spaces as anyone else. If it offends you that the kid acts in a way befitting a kid that’s your problem.

I'm not so sure about that. Two thoughts: The main reason me and my SO don't have kids is a deep concern about there not being any sure way to absolutely guarantee that a new person brought to this world will live a happy and fulfilling life and that the ethical thing to do is to when able (SO finishing education) adopt a child in need to improve their lives.

This of course means that I'm currently pretty sure that most _parents_ don't get it and that the commitment is lost on _them_.

But I'm also sure that they aren't doing anything wrong by having kids, it's just that it aligns with a value we share to not, ever, be a problem for other people. This trickles down into as fine-grain things as walking efficiently in public so that others aren't bothered and running into you and spending countless hours helping people out with without any reciprocation. So when you do encounter a whirlwind-family in public where the parents do not care about affecting others negatively it's unfortunately easy to become judgmental.

>it's just that it aligns with a value we share to not, ever, be a problem for other people

It’s a bit late for that; you’ve already gone through infanthood, toddlerhood, and childhood and benefitted from the patience and generosity of more strangers than you will ever know. Now you imply that perhaps parents and their children should try to not affect others negatively. I think by and large they do, but to the extent they do affect others this way, you owe some debt of patience, and are you so sure it’s paid off?

> It’s a bit late for that; you’ve already gone through infanthood, toddlerhood, and childhood and benefitted from the patience and generosity of more strangers than you will ever know. Now you imply that perhaps parents and their children should try to not affect others negatively. I think by and large they do, but to the extent they do affect others this way, you owe some debt of patience, and are you so sure it’s paid off?

That's the thing though. I don't think children are born with a debt to their parents or to society that they have to pay off. Now I don't go around complaining about people with kids, and just wanted to add that there are people who could have a general dislike for things being annoying or 'in the way' which could include children (or rather their parents, I don't think it's fair to put any responsibility on the children). I have a friend with with ASD that gets extremely upset with any disturbances, and who have posted more than a few rants about parents 'not controlling their kids' online, but in his case those posts are not unique to children, but without that context they read as if written by someone tho specifically dislikes kids.

I don't think children by and large have a negative effect on families and the individuals around them (if we are trusting parents, not happiness-studies) and they do have a beneficial effect on society (more people, more taxes, more welfare and happiness for the population), it's just that I don't want to create a person, that _I_ would owe a great life. The idea of viewing children as owing anything to their parents or to society before being able to make decisions for themselves as an 'ancestral sin' (original sin?) is something I feel very uncomfortable with.

Now, the thinking that the child who has no say about being brought into existence has a debt and saying it's a bit late to opt out implies that I (and other people) should have ended it in infancy to avoid this debt, and to gain the right to want things to not be annoying, but I am also pretty sure that it's a completely unreasonable expectation and doubtfully even a biologically possible decision. The consequences of that view seem awful both morally and ethically, thought I think few people spell them out.

But yeah, I don't dislike kids, but I understand someone going on a rant about them being annoying either because they don't know how hard it is or because they view themselves as not impacting others in the same way and wanting others to share their values. But I don't agree that it can be dismissed with a statement like this

> They just don’t get it. The totality of the commitment is lost on them. > What’s new is that they also just don’t care.

Look, to some extent we’re all ASD. I hate crowds. I get exhausted being in places where people are having thousands of loud conversations.

I’ll complain that I hate people. But you know what? I’m the one with the problem. Not them. They have every right to be and do as they please. If I don’t like crowds, I can easily avoid them by doing my errands some other time.

Point is, we cannot have society change it self to accommodate every whim. Your friend is ASD, it sucks but that’s just the way his (our) life is.

Yes, but venting frustration does not mean that you are actually requesting a societal change, so you can't create arguments assuming everyone complaining really think things should be different. People have every right to voice frustrations.

But, people do not have every right to be and do as they please in public. We have norms and laws and they can change and do vary. There are a lot of limitations specifically on being loud.

> The main reason me and my SO don't have kids is a deep concern about there not being any sure way to absolutely guarantee that a new person brought to this world will live a happy and fulfilling life

There is almost NOTHING you can do with an absolute guarantee in this world: You can't even drive down the road with an absolute guarantee that you won't end up having a stroke and killing few people. IOW - this is the true scotsman equivalent of justification. The idea here is that smart, empathetic and introspective folks have children and in turn raise smart, empathetic and introspective kids, thereby tilting humanity towards enlightenment. I look at it as my part to move humanity forward (the other part being me doing my best to provide for them AND ensure my own life has meaning as well). IOW I don't buy this reason - it sounds like perfection blocking reality to me.

> and that the ethical thing to do is to when able (SO finishing education) adopt a child in need to improve their lives.

It is awesome that folks adopt: Those kids do need a home. It may even be an ethical thing to do. BUT that doesn't make having your own kid unethical. As I mentioned before, I do believe you have an ethical commitment to move humanity forward as well. Ending your own gene branch just because there are other branches you could take care of is not an alternative: It is more of an orthogonal thing. IOW foster as many kids as you can. I don't buy that it is a replacement to not have kids, especially considering the argument above. If you can't foster, you can always contribute as well to foster care systems in your country.

When I travel with my toddler, I always wait to get off..well, he is wearing a diaper anyways. I assume when he is a bit older, we will get off much more quickly, but right now...it is just too much of a hassle to rush off the plane.

> kids have tiny bladders

Very small kids have diapers. Planes have bathrooms.

> when did childless folks become such fragile babies?

Huh? I have a 10 month old and a 3 year old. I am offering advice based on my personal experience.

It’s a lot more pleasant for both us and everyone else if we wait for faster groups to clear out first. After sitting on a plane for 2–12 hours, waiting an extra 5 minutes is not a big deal.

We debark trains a lot with my family, and I prefer waiting, but that extra minute can be a lot easier to handle waiting in line with a three year old than sitting down. Every situation is different with people, families are included in that.

Access to the plane bathrooms is barely sufficient for me. Too much of the flight you cant get up or vc ant get to them. I've had many a flight involve my own pee pee dance, I think it is fair to say I can be a problem for some families.

Edit: sorry for being needlessly combative.

> Very small kids have diapers. Planes have bathrooms.

I have a 5 and 9 year old and fly regularly. I don't know if you've considered the amount of time that can elapse from seat belt sign on for landing to deplaning. Nevermind a turbulent flight.

And trying to use the bathroom at the rear of a plane that just arrived isn't really going to smooth the deplaning process.

But like I said, my family is not slowing anyone down, we're usually faster because we're ready and the adults organized the kids while we waited for our turn.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how provoked you were by another comment, or feel you were. It just makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry! Thanks for moderating things.

Agree with glennpratt. When you have kids all you want (and the kids want) is to get off a long-haul flight. I have my kids clean-up, potty, etc. at about the 1hr 15min mark prior to landing. Trust me, we're packed and ready to get off the moment we're at the gate.

I was on a flight a year or two ago where, upon landing, a woman turned her phone on and received a call informing her that her brother had passed away. She was understandably quite distraught as we taxied to the gate, and the lead flight attendant even made an announcement asking everyone to please remain seated so that she could exit the plane first.

Nobody listened.

I witnessed what seemed like a severe case of hypoglycemia in a passenger a few rows from me while stuck in a plane.

The idea that someone might die because people cannot just listen is somewhat scary.

I saw (just the seat in front) someone taken ill.

The crew left the seatbelt sign on, and paramedics in uniform boarding meant everyone got the message.

People did die on Aeroflot Flight 1492 because they didn't listen to instructions to leave their luggage behind.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2019/0...

There's a lot of doubt about those early reports being accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_1492#Evacuatio...

...the lead flight attendant even made an announcement asking everyone to please remain seated so that she could exit the plane first.

Nobody listened.

I find myself with a case of both sider-ism on this. One the one hand (the hand that really should win out), we should all be able to act as decent empathetic people with the instruction following capabilities of a 7 year old when the situation dictates. But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

> But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

I never understood this. What exactly would you have airlines do? They don’t operate on massive margins. Ticket prices are the lowest or nearly the lowest they have ever been. You should blame the cheapness of the general populace for encouraging the squeezing of every last penny in ticket prices that results in the explosion of the 28” legroom budget airline market. You’re not entitled to air travel. Don’t like the (lack of) space? Pay for business or first class where the airline actually makes a profit. In the meantime, you better damn well listen to the flight crew’s instructions.

Sure, the legroom is considerably lacking in economy class. But aside from that (a small price to pay for a trip that would otherwise take days to months, no?) what makes you call being on a flight being like "damn cattle"?

>But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

I don't get the gripe with leg room, unless you are oddly shaped. I'm 6' and I don't care about leg room or leaning back, because in every flight you can just push your bag under your seat and stretch your legs fully under the seat ahead of you.

I find a 5 hour flight more comfortable than 3 hour sporting event on an aluminum bleacher.

I am 6'5" and I feel that if I can fly without complaining about leg room, all you oompa loompas should be able to as well. ;)

I really feel for the folks 6'7" and over tho. I have just about an inch of slack when I sit down on a Delta flight, so I imagine beyond that would be pretty uncomfortable. Also, I resolved not to fly on Air Asia any more because they seem to leave a lot less room even than our Western LCC flights.

Yeah, tall people complaining about anything is like Rich people complaining about stuff. You won the genetic lottery, just deal with a couple of minor yearly inconveniences when you can enjoy life's other benefits. (Better choice of partners, Higher Pay and Raises, Faster career growth)

I fully agree that an airline seat is more comfortable than bleachers but how do you put your bag under your seat - there's almost always someone else's feet or bag there?

I think he means under the legs, which are outstretched under the seat in front. I do this and it works well.

That is how I read it. And that is what I do, unless I want to sleep.

In that scenario, I put the bag on the tray, bear hug it, and drop right off. Leaning forward into the bag works for me.

(Yes, I have a huggable bag, and I have one of those thin blankets I mooched from Delta years ago.)

I found that for me it depends a lot on the tilt of the seats: when I flew Southwest, the seat was ramrod-straight, and I am not able to relax. On Asian carriers, seats are more comfortable, and I was even able to fall asleep. It didn't really depend on the seat pitch, so much as the seat angle.

> in every flight you can just push your bag under your seat and stretch your legs fully under the seat ahead of you.

What flights are you taking? Usually knees are touching/almost touching the seat in front of you. There's absolutely no way to stretch your legs under that seat. You can only wiggle your legs sideways.

This in low cost carriers on Europe, so I know what I'm buying and like it this way. I wouldn't pay extra for legroom unless flight time starts creeping to four hours.

Well, no wonder you don't get it, you have a pretty typical height. 10 or 15 cm make a huge difference in terms of seat legroom, especially taking into account that it's a well-known fact that tall people have a larger leg to torso ratio, i.e., most of the difference between an average and a tall individual is in leg length.

I'm 197 cm (between 6'5" and 6'6") and not only it's totally impossible for me to stretch my legs under the front seat, but in some airlines there is just no position for me in standard economy seats that won't physically hurt. When I fly for leisure, I pay to get more legroom, or just don't go. But since when I fly for work some silly regulations prevent me from paying for extra legroom, the first day after a longish flight I typically walk around limping.

-See your doctor.

I am 6'8" and had the same issue with my employer - as a cost-cutting measure it was decided that anybody but C-level would fly economy, period.

A quick visit to my doctor (who, I should add, is 6'6" or so and as such understands the issue) resulted in a letter stating that physical discomfort aside, there was a very real chance that I might develop health issues from spending a few hundred hours[0] a year in such a cramped position - deep vein thrombosis most notably.

Problem solved. No way they were going to risk acting against medical advice and later be confronted with it.

Short haul I couldn't care less where I sit, but if I am to stay in a seat for several hours, it had better be reasonably comfortable.

[0] At the time, this was not an exaggeration.

A couple of times on Air Canada the attendants asked everybody to let those with close connections leave first, and people listened. I suppose there might have been a couple of jerks who ignored the announcement but nobody could tell.

I think that's the difference. Once one person behaves poorly, others interpret that as permission to also be a jerk so it's "fair".

It worked because it was Air Canada.

To be fair, I've seen up to an entire plane cooperate for much less serious reasons than the one you mentioned. On budget airlines. In America.

IMO _how_ you treat the "cattle" (as a commenter in this thread referred) is the deciding factor. Some flight crews have a solid leader or two who can really command the respect/fear of the passengers' collective psyche. Like that strict but good teacher you may have had in middle school who ran a tight ship.

Some flight crews are meek and/or too drained give a flying f*.

This is one of those stories that's seemingly low-stakes compared to everything going on in the world, but that I find unusually affecting. It's a perfect illustration in microcosm of how fundamentally despicable most people are.

Out of curiosity, what airports was the flight between?

DTW to PWM

It's not necessarily that they didn't care. When there is a natural action and people have a habit of taking it, then they may just forget the instruction and do what they have always done. Yes in 30s.

How could the passengers have known which woman is the one they should let pass ?

She was up near the front, and they pointed her out.

The only time I witnessed passengers staying sit was after an announcement that said: "we know by experience that our pilots are much better at flying than at driving, so for your own safety, please keep seated until the 'fasten seatbelts' lights are turned off."

There is no (legal) way to make the passengers disembark orderly...

My experience has been that people exiting a plane could give a shit about fairness.

It's a traffic jam where those closest to the door get there first, not anything ordered.

Deplaning is not a very significant problem because there are other things that are being taken care of while it is happening.

However, you can't start boarding until a certain point and from there until the plane leaves the gate, a lot of resources are locked.

It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

> It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

Sure, but to airlines, that's a revenue opportunity, not a problem.

If deplaning could be 5% faster without any impact to other factors, it'd be done immediately by all airlines.

Just consider the knock-on effects in terms of flight on-time % for subsequent legs on a multi-leg flight.

I dunno, boarding could be much faster if they did window, middle, aisle instead of the random order they do now, and I don't see any airlines picking up that proverbial $20 bill

You are thinking of a single flight as disconnected from the entire ecosystem - in reality, the gate is occupied, the next flight can't board, cleanup can't take place and probably a half dozen other things I can't think up. And costs go up dramatically if things are already behind.

I'd say deplaning quickly is about as important as boarding.

No, you missed the point. Speeding up deplaning won’t help much because of all of the things happening below the passenger deck (unloading baggage, unloading packages, emptying sewage, etc.) and in the cockpit (debrief).

Getting passengers off quickly won’t help speed up the general post-flight process much. It’s very rare that the bottleneck is waiting for the cabin to be cleaned.

Some of the deplaners hold up the next flight they need to board. Airlines could optimize that.

Thanks - you made my point more effectively - one slow deplaning flight could hold up flights for those passengers connecting and the results cascade. Most of those connecting flights are probably with the same airline.

Not really. Airlines can’t make the layovers tighter because the issue is variance in delays, not problems deplaning.

Also, the US airlines will not hold a flight due to a delayed inbound unless it’s got a shitload of the passengers. I’ve seen Delta depart on time and cause 10 passengers on a delayed flight to miss by only 15 minutes.

Wont help who much? Maybe as you say throughput wouldn't increase because other things need to happen anyway. But passenger latency would improve and that's valuable.

Why is that valuable ? Would you pay double to deplane 5 minutes sooner ?

Depends...

On a commuter flight with a 10-20 minute turn around time, deplaning speed is definitely relevant. Not many bags are being checked anyways, and the next set of passengers is already in line waiting to board.

On any flight > 1.5 hours or on a plane bigger than a 737, your point holds. On a 11 hour international flight via a 777, deplane speed is really unimportant at all.

Idle thought I had a while back: Let people who don't have anything in the overhead bins get off first.

People without stuff should sit next to the aisle. (and get on last)

Without stuff in the overhead bin*

I routinely travel with just a backpack that fits under the seat in front of me (packed for 3-5 days).

On the contrary, a lot of people store stuff in the overhead bins that they will access during the flight, so sitting in the aisle is the best spot for them (if you're trying to minimize how many times the people in aisles have to put their tray table up and rotate their legs.

On flights more 2 hours (so 6/9/14 hour flights) I'll put on the provided slippers and store my shoes in the overhead bin so my feet have more room. I usually travel with a backpack and a satchel, but my sound cancelling headphones take up a lot of space in my satchel, so before landing I'll put them back in my backpack. I usually have to go to the bathroom anyways before landing, so it isn't an extra get-up-out-of-seat-and-into-aisle-operation.

Yesterday I saw someone get up to access the bin 4-5 times in a 14 hour span. They were conviniently short enough so that they didn't have to get out of their seat (just had to stand on it) to access the bin.

Yes. To implement this you simply lock the overheads while in final descent, which makes sense anyway for safety reasons.

I can get my stuff out of the overhead bin in about 1 second.

I have a better idea: people should have to go through qualification testing to see how fast they can grab their backpack out of the bin and start walking down the aisle. Fast people should get special dispensation, and slow people should be required to leave last. The problem is that too many people bumble around and take forever to do a very simple task.

Most people very rarely fly. Anyone can stumble doing a simple task for the first time in years while in a stressful situation.

That's fine: those people don't get priority status and have to wait until the qualified people leave until they can go.

Orrrr, hear me out, we just deal with people being a bit slow as just a part of life and remember that it's amazing we're able to fly at all.

I recently had to travel home last minute, this is a 9.400km trip, amazingly it took me less than 18 hours door-to-door, probably could've done it in less than 16 hours if I didn't leave to the airport so early. I could care less if getting off the plane took 5-10 minutes longer than it should.

Doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. A house with a leaky roof is amazing compared to no shelter, but it’s still a leaky roof.

This sounds like some sort of patient wisdom until you realize that there's no actual upside to your seeming preference of doing things less efficiently. Appreciating the ability to fly across the world isn't exclusive of being able to improve the experience when there are easy ways to do so with few, if any, downsides.

By your logic, why not add an additional mandatory thirty minute waiting period to deplane? After all, it's amazing that we can fly.

> your seeming preference of doing things less efficiently

It's not a preference, it's a realization that this is a human problem and you're never going to get full compliance from a large group of people who all move at different speeds, have varying amounts of luggage, varyings levels of selfishness, and various other factors that affect deplaning speed.

This whole comment thread seems to be full of single tech bros that are mad they can't get off the plane faster, and are trying to design "solutions" and "algorithms" to make it faster, all while assuming every other passenger is also a single person who can deplane as fast as them.

> By your logic, why not add an additional mandatory thirty minute waiting period to deplane? After all, it's amazing that we can fly.

Because that's contrived and fucking stupid, whereas humans being slow and selfish in a cramped environment is a natural cause of delay.

Your logic is predicated on the assumption that we currently have optimal processes for boarding/deplaning (given human psychology). Anyone with a passing familiarity with the airline industry knows how ludicrous it is to make the assumption that everything is run optimally[1]. Your assumption is just as "fucking stupid" and only marginally less contrived than my (facetious) hypothetical.

> This whole comment thread seems to be full of single tech bros that are mad they can't get off the plane faster, and are trying to design "solutions" and "algorithms" to make it faster, all while assuming every other passenger is also a single person who can deplane as fast as them.

You've clearly only read a fraction of the comments if you think that no one's thinking about (eg) family boarding and deplaning. And "tech bro" is a pretty reliable tell for "I'm hopelessly out of depth when it comes to comprehending this conversation".

[1] This isn't quite a knock on airlines themselves; the economics of the industry leads to bizarre incentives.

This is where being a jerk would be beneficial for everyone. Simply put, the person at the front of the line should basically just ignore everyone and move forward. People aggressively jumping in gaps would even be OK because it would give people in the back time to grab their stuff and get organized.

Being polite is what ends up slowing everyone down. (the same is not true for boarding. Back to front outside columns to inside columns would be far faster)

You think it's beneficial. The people who are angered by the rudeness would not perceive it as beneficial.

One of the problems is people who put their carry on luggage 4 or 5 rows down from their seat. This should just not be allowed, period.

People don't have control over this. The overhead compartments near your seat are full and thus closed, so you must put them elsewhere. One person with two massive carry-ons can basically fill an entire compartment alone.

That's why the crew should be enforcing the bag limits. One person is only supposed to have 1 carry-on, and it's supposed to be a relatively small size.

Generally it's one carry-on and one "personal item".

Yeah, and the personal item is supposed to go under the seat in front of you.

Often the "personal item" is another suitcase. If given the position of power, I would decree that if your carry-on or personal item has wheels on it, it's not a carry on and must be checked.

I´ll get my duffel bag. Hope I don´t bump into anyone already in their seat.

You sometimes have people who will put their bags in the first bin they find and then walk back a few rows. Then when deplaning they get out of their seat not having to rustle their bags in the crowd, they merely walk forward, grab their bag and keep going.

The last flight I took, the attendants kept the first 3 bins on both sides closed to allow late front people a place to put their bags. Still people kept opening the bins trying to put a bag in when it wasn't their section.

I don’t think anyone WANTS to have their luggage 4 or 5 rows away.

The obvious issue is, people sitting in rows are often together and want to disembark together. Often they are elderly or children, and need to disembark with the others in their row.

I think exiting should be "without bags in overheads - Now!" followed by front to rear general.

What they should do is disallow anyone from opening the overhead bins until all the people who didn't insist on carrying on all their luggage exit.

I insist on carrying all my luggage with me because while you’re waiting at the luggage claim I’ve already left the airport.

The other common bottleneck with exiting is when you have to go back a few rows to get to where you had to stow your carry-on, because the plane was boarded from the front, and all of the overflow from the people who boarded ahead of you taking up the bins overhead of your seat.

> The reason we do the row-by-row method

The seats at the front of the plane cost more money. The airlines want everyone who didn’t pay extra to suffer a little to encourage them to pay more next time.

I mean another take on this is that the airlines want the people who paid the extra money to get the benefits they paid for. Pisses me off to have paid for premium seating and then get caught in the general crush.

The whole aisle fills up pretty immediately upon the Fasten Seatbelt sign becoming unilluminated. As soon as this happens, there's no other option except the row-by-row method, like when a stoplight turns green on a bunch of waiting cars.

On the majority of flights I take, at least 15-25% of passengers remove their seatbelts and take their bags (or try) before the light is switched off.

We do row-by-row because, generally, people with higher status and/or fares sit closer to the front -- and it feels more fair to let them off (and on) first, even if it costs minutes.

Huh? No, that makes no sense at all. The fares are exactly the same in the entire section of the cabin, and only differ by section (i.e., business class costs more than economy, "economy plus" costs more than economy, etc.). Planes don't have different costs by row within the same section.

We do row-by-row because we intuitively think that people closer to the exit should be able to get to the exit faster, even though this isn't really the case.

We do row by row because unless you litterally climb on top of those in rows further ahead than you (currently standing the isle and possibly getting their bagage) there is no other way out.

I’m pretty sure fares for each person fluctuate greatly depending on when they purchase and what terms they had and what discount or upgrades they have.

Again, as I just wrote to the other responder, that has absolutely nothing to do with your seat location (within the same section).

Seat 34F does not cost more than seat 35F.

Based on your other responses, what you intended to convey and what many people are interpreting are two different things.

What everyone else is saying is that the person in seat 34F likely did not pay the same as the person in seat 35F (since they purchase at different times and the airline continuously changes prices), whereas what you are claiming is that 34F and 35F cost the same for the same person.

What I am claiming is that there's no difference in those two seats' prices at a given point in time. Yes, prices fluctuate, but that has nothing to do with the seats. When you purchase an economy ticket (assuming these two seats are both in regular economy), the prices for them is exactly the same at that moment in time. You're allowed to pick either one of them, and the price is the same. Wait a week, however, and the price will be different, but it'll still be the same for both seats.

I really don't understand why people on this forum don't understand this and why I have to spell it out in such explicit detail. It's self-evident.

Even worse, this means that, if the people in 34F and 35F purchased their tickets at different times, they could have paid different prices, but that doesn't tell us anything about which seat cost more. Either person could have paid more, depending on when they bought their ticket and how the airline adjusted pricing during that time. So, as I've been saying all along, there's no difference in value between those two seats, by virtue of their location on the plane.

The fares (on most airlines) are absolutely not the same throughout an entire section. They vary based on purchase time, seat "quality" (which includes location), extra features such as legroom & recline, spikes in demand, etc.

Sorry, that's complete BS. Maybe you haven't taken a plane in a long time, but fares are by section only. Then, on the website, you get to pick your seat, AFTER you've chosen the section and fare. The price doesn't change unless you move to a more expensive section (like "economy plus").

The legroom and recline is all the same within the same section, except for the exit rows.

Sorry, but nope.

As I said, the price you paid for your seat may and often will vary from that paid by the person next to you by factors including purchase time, seat "quality" (which includes location), extra features such as legroom & recline, spikes in demand, etc.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're trying to claim that two seats next to each other can be in different sections, that one is economy while the one right next to it is First Class, and that's total BS. Planes aren't organized that way. Go take a flight sometime.

No - I'm not claiming they are different sections. That would be stupid.

I'm stating the simple - and well-known - fact that the price paid by the person in 17C (aisle) can be quite different from that paid by the person in 17D (also aisle).

I flew over 150 legs last year. Premier status on three different airlines.

Please stop with the ad hominen attacks and learn something about this market.

>fact that the price paid by the person in 17C (aisle) can be quite different from that paid by the person in 17D (also aisle).

The original claim was "We do row-by-row because, generally, people with higher status and/or fares sit closer to the front".

Everything you've written does not support this claim at all. Maybe you should learn something about reading comprehension.

Nice try. You wrote:

"The fares are exactly the same in the entire section of the cabin"

Which is simply put, completely false.

My response was: "The fares (on most airlines) are absolutely not the same throughout an entire section"...

Maybe you should learn something about logic and argumentation.

My claim was correct. At any point in time, the fares ARE exactly the same. If you don't believe that, then you're a moron because you're flat out wrong. I can't put it any nicer than that. When you buy a ticket, the price for seats 37A and 38B are exactly the same. Full stop. Again, if you don't believe this, you're stupid.

Are tickets differently priced at different times? Yes. Any idiot knows this: the airlines change prices over time to extract more money from last-minute buyers. This isn't what I was talking about, and it's obvious that's not what I was talking about, so if that's the basis of your argument, then you're a pedantic asshole.

> Huh? No, that makes no sense at all. The fares are exactly the same in the entire section of the cabin, and only differ by section

Tickets in a cabin vary greatly in price on many airlines according to several independent variables including: seat location/quality; degrees of flexibility (changeable vs non); refundable vs not; hold baggage included vs not; singles vs returns; currency used (cash vs frequent flyer currency); earnings in frequent flyer scheme; point to point vs connecting; point of sale country; ... there are probably more.

Completely wrong. You're talking about the overall ticket price with addons; the things you refer to have nothing to do with seat location and quality. I already addressed this: first class, business class, economy plus, economy. Other than that, the prices are the same. There's no difference, WITHIN THE SAME SECTION, between two seats.

Take the seat-width served by an isle (if there's only one it's the plane width), round up. This is the 'sparring'.

Disembark all of First class first, as it will have a different sparring and they paid more.

For the remaining rows start with modulus = 0, then 1, then up to (sparring) N - 1. Dequeue those rows in parallel in N waves.

Good luck using your math on humans, I'm sure they'll all understand.

Without commenting on the wisdom of the plan above: what in earth are you talking about? You don't just announce the equation and say good luck. You'd announce each row or range of rows in order, the same way you do for boarding (or in boarding's case, as encapsulated by boarding groups).

The real issue would be compliance, not comprehension.

> The real issue would be compliance, not comprehension.

That's why I'm saying "good luck"

Those "equations" don't account for human factors like families traveling together, elderly who need help getting their luggage down, or a sick passenger.

You can't just throw out some mathematical solution to the problem and consider it solved, so what on earth were _they_ talking about?

It does attempt to with the rows at a time feature, and if this is the known unloading procedure makes it much more likely for a family to actually book a row rather than seats in front and behind.

The obvious exception is to make the kids just move when the adults do (clustering on the largest unit of adults).

However this is more like a 'family exception' than a back of the napkin description of the algorithm.

I think boarding was covered in Freakanomics. Column boarding is technically fastest, but too impractical to coordinate. Just letting everyone randomly line up and enter the plane turns out to be the most efficient practical method, but no airlines do that.

Edit: looks like my memory is poor...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/theres-...

> Just letting everyone randomly line up and enter the plane turns out to be the most efficient practical method, but no airlines do that.

Doesn't Southwest do that?

Southwest's "lining up" process is not random; you get an assigned position in the line according to a set of factors.

Once you start boarding, each person can sit in any seat that s/he wants.

It's psuedo-random based on when you get your boarding pass (starting 24 hours). Essentially the quest for a non-middle seat conditional on distance to the front door.

Most Australian airlines just let people randomly board, apart from letting priority passengers (disabled, business class, gold and platinum frequent flyers) board first.

It does perplex me when I travel to other countries and experience complicated systems with boarding groups etc. that never seem any better than the random method!

I just wish people that had to wait 20 minutes for their checked in luggage to be unloaded would stay seated until others had exited.

I always do that, and do not really understand why it's not more common, even using a completely selfish and self-serving perspective.

That cramped aisle after everyone who could possibly get up did get up is damn uncomfortable, and those tiny seats get a lot roomier after my neighbors got up.

My working hypothesis is "irrational herd behavior".

I'd welcome any insights.

You can’t have constant movement, it has to come in waves because no-one wants to get up out of their seat as giant carry-ons are unloaded from above.

My 2-bit idea is that we let passengers with no overhead luggage board and exit first. Let those who want to move at glacial speed do so, without slowing everyone else down.

As someone who hasn't checked a bag for a decade, this seems fair. I save a TON of time and hassle not checking luggage, and it seems only fair that those who do check luggage not be held up further by my choice.

Except the people who checked luggage are going to end up waiting at the luggage pick up anyway.

Sure, but sitting on an airport floor (+ being able to go the bathroom, get water, wifi, etc) is better than half-standing in a cramped dry aircraft that you've spent the last X hours in.

You can stay seated, you don’t have to half stand.

Personally, I’d like to be able to exit from multiple sides of the plane. Getting people to be orderly is hard, but at least you can half it.

I used to always fly southwest out of Burbank, and they exit from the front and back. I would always board late and go to the back, and be the first one out. I got pissed when they started telling people during boarding about how they exit at our destination, and more people sat in back.

This implies you could choose your seat, and the plane wasn't full. That sounds like a different era to start with.

Southwest still lets everyone choose their seat.... you get a place in line based on when you check in, and when you get on the plane you pick any seat.

> I'm also convinced that we exit the plane in the worst way possible. We basically do it row-by-row: as the people in front of them leave, people in a row get up, get their bags, start walking down the line, and this cascades up the plane.

This also has causes problems with weight balance - I've been on flights before where the attendants asked the back 10 rows to disembark first because otherwise the plane would nose up too much as the front lightened, and leave a gap between the door and the stairs.

A much simpler solution is for aisle folks to help people in their row with bags while waiting. I'm obligated to do so with family, but it works other times too. Try it some time.

I feel sorry for the person who has to wait with my two year old after I get off.

I think when you’re getting on the plane, you’re forced to adhere to airline rules, si boarding groups can give them real control over the situation. When you leave, what is the airline going to do if you don’t listen? Kick you off the plane you just left?

You really can’t feasibly make people do this on the way out even if it would work.

Yes, that is what I said in the close of my comment.

You don't need to get off the plane 1-3 minutes earlier. In fact I doubt it would even add up to that. The spread between the first passengers off and the last, non doddling passenger is rarely that long.

Families, friends, couples are not going to go for your rule that one of them should get off first and the other should wait for the entire rest of column to leave.

How about just trying to be more patient? Find something to distract you and those 1 - 3 minutes will be over in a moment.

Agreed, but this is HN so of course we need to endlessly argue and overengineer things in order to arrive at the most theoretically optimal solution which completely ignores practical issues.

Multiply that 3 minutes by however many passengers are on the plane and you're saving days of human existence.

There's much more lower-hanging fruit out there if your goal is reducing borderline unpleasant waiting experiences for humanity.

Those 1–3 minutes can make a difference in a small amount of cases, like tight time spaces in connecting flights.

My ideal plane de-boarding strategy would be to separate everyone in a few groups depending on priorities (people with connecting flights, people without stowed luggage, ...) and mostly make sure that the ones that have to go down earlier do it.

I am patient - I distract myself by reasoning through how to improve the process.

The problem here is that we don't have a common objective to fight for when exiting the plane.

Other people don't care if you exit faster or slower, they only care to exit as soon as possible.

There is no tangible reason to fight for having everyone exit at the shortest possible time so nobody simply does it, why should they ?

If you only have a front door exit, then column-by-column would work for the first column, but then it would switch to row-by-row starting from the back, since the column moves forward, and that allows the last row people to join the end of the column first.

If you have front and back door exits, the same would happen, but row-by-row would start from the middle of the plane.

I wonder if a mechanical solution could be used: fold away the arm rests and squash the seats together. 6 armrests folded away would make the isle twice as wide. This could make boarding and exiting more than twice as fast because you have double the capacity and people can overtake others stowing luggage.

Interesting engineering challenge to design those seats. Perhaps leave the armrests and use a wormwheel to make the seats narrower is easier to implement. Could be hilarious if engaged while people are sitting in them.

CGP Grey has a great video examining different boarding methods and why some are slower or faster than others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

Also noting that the way we deplane (front to back) is the slowest method, heh.

Great video. This is one of those phenomena, like how to fix traffic jams, that everyone has an opinion on because of firsthand experience, but few people know about the actual research on. Despite there being known fast methods, I think 2 things stand in the way of implementing them:

1) Business and 1st class make a lot of money for airlines. Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable) would devalue their tickets and make less profit for the airline.

2) Airplanes have to undergo certain maintenance checks or procedures whenever they land. Those take some fixed amount of time. There is no incentive to speed up the boarding/deplaning process past that fixed amount of time, since it won't be the limiting factor.

One option that isnt discussed is having the overhead bins be seperately ticketed and a box. So if you want a bin, you pay $40 and one gets asigned to you. It would streamline boarding because people would put their stuff in the bin and be done.

Until they don't, and then the air hostesses who are just trying to get everyone seated have to become policemen as well. They have enough to do.

Not really any different than having assigned seats for people.

Overhead bins tend to be under provisioned for the amount of passengers boarding.

Because airlines starting charging for checked bags.

Aside from it being difficult to implement, I like this idea, especially if it’s less to check. I have noticed that some airlines, Alaska for example, will give free gate checks to folks.

although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

When I was fat, I paid extra for first class tickets so that I wouldn't be the slob jerk who overflowed into my neighbor's coach class seat. Because of that, I had a lot of coach-mindset first-class seats.

Boarding first in first class gives you an opportunity to get some work done, to relax a bit before the plane takes off, and almost always you get to have a drink and a snack before the plane leaves the ground. It gives you a chance to put your head on straight for the next leg of the journey, or catch up on stuff before the ascent.

If you're a busy person (as I was back then), boarding first really makes a difference.

How much longer do you get typically? I never have to wait that long to board as economy so I am curious if my economy boarding is atypical. I could totally see how an hour sitting in first class might be nicer than poking about a terminal. Is it ever that long?

It really depends on the size of the airplane. Just a couple weeks ago I was one of the first 10 people to board the plane and was in "Premium Economy" on a 777-300ER for a full flight from Eastern Europe to the Midwestern US. I'd guess I was on the plane for nearly an hour before we pushed back from the gate. But this is for a plane with 300 people that boarded through a single door.

That is mindblowing. Even on an A380 that was only boarding through a single door I've never experienced an hour on the ground in the plane before pushing back. That would be super annoying.

It sounds like you just normally board well into the boarding process. The standard for many domestic flights is to start 40 mins prior to departure. International is 1hr+.

In the US. I fly Ryanair fairly regularly, and European flights are fully boarded within 20 minutes often.

It is not a question of how long after business does economy board. It is a question of how much after economy starts will business board if order was reversed.

I have done some business travel and some premium economy travel, and I have seen airlines take 40-60 minutes from "formal" boarding time to takeoff. When they require 60 minutes, it usually is a big plane and the difference between business and economy could be 20 minutes easily (assuming the seating was reversed).

I have wondered many a times if boarding last would not be better? But there is a joy to leaving the lounge and directly walking into the plane if you time it right. Otherwise you end up waiting for others to board first. Also, I could afford to be late and still get in, not so if my boarding group was the last.

These are minor luxuries, but each has some value. In the bigger scheme of things, and given that it is hard to afford business travel all the time on personal dime, I would say it does not matter much :)

I've typically had 20-25 extra minutes before they finally close the door. It's enough to get a head start on a podcast or watch a short TV episode.

There's nothing stopping you from watching that in the airport.

It is still much more pleasant to do it sitting down with a drink, than breaking focus every 30 seconds to check your boarding status.

I have lounge access through my credit card but even if you don't, it's way cheaper to pay the airport lounge day rate than to fly biz class.

The only thing that comes to mind is worrying about listening for boarding info and making sure I don't miss it. Once my butt is in a seat, I'm no longer worried about making sure I get onto a plane at the right time.

No, there is one thing. Once I'm in my seat I don't have to pay attention any more. This is worth a lot because they won't know whether you're the guy who's missing. And if you're in the lounge there's no way you make it to the gate on time unless you time it yourself.

although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

The hustle and bustle at the gate stresses me out. (There's no good reason why and it shouldn't, but it does.) Once I'm sitting in my window seat, I close my eyes and relax.

>although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

Most people finding waiting to board unpleasant and want it over ASAP. For me personally, it is often less comfortable in the terminal for a number of reasons. The climate and noise is worse, I must keep an eye on luggage, and I have a mild anxiety about inexplicably losing my documentation or becoming too engrossed in whatever activity I am doing while I wait.

Alternatively, I could be sitting, stretching, taking off my shoes, ordering a drink, and focusing my full attention work/entertainment/sleep for that 20 minutes.

Many airports have half decent lounges. My personal preference is to hang out in the lounge until the boarding is nearly over, stroll onto the plane and sit down to go, but this tends to be impractical due to luggage.

> personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

Maybe peace of mind? One you're on the plane you know you're good to go. When you're in the terminal you have to keep diverting your attention to announcements, changes, distractions, etc.

It also has optionality. If you want to board first, you're welcome to. If you want to board last, you're also welcome to do that with a first-class ticket.

I'm in the "board first, get it over with, get settled in" camp. My wife wants the boarding door to brush her backside as they close it. When we travel together, we don't always board together.

>I've always wondered why this is desirable

Others have noted other reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that 1st/business class seats are more comfortable than the crappy crowded boarding area. Economy seats, it's the other way around. And as an added bonus, on something like a 787 where the boarding doors are behind business class, boarding first means you're lounging around in the front of the plane being served drinks and addressed by name while behind you the rabble are are being herded like cattle into their tiny seats at the back.

For 3x the price, 1st/business class want luxury, and sitting elbow to elbow with the riffraff in beat up terminal seating isn't that.

Business/1st class passengers (at least on international flights) almost always have access to lounges, rather than waiting in the gate area. As good as the plane seats are, I'd still rather spend as much lounge time as possible.

I would never consider waiting in a lounge past the start of boarding.

The risk of having to reschedule a $5K flight is to great to justify the reward. If I'm not going to be in the lounge, I'm back to minimizing the time at the gate.

Ok, but on domestic they generally don't.

Also, most lounges really aren't very good. AmEx centurion lounge is nice. But like, the United lounge in your average airport is really a few steps down from your typical airport bar.

To be clear, 1st class is about 10x to 35x more expensive than economy for a transatlantic flight (I wouldn't bother with upgrading on any flight I couldn't catch some sleep on).

(BA: ~£200 Economy for LHR-JFK, £2300 to £7300 depending on day 1st Class)

Boarding first on budget Airlines like Ryanair guarantees you a space in the overhead for your carry on, as opposed to it taking all your legroom or being forcibly checked in at the gate ("free of charge" as if it's a service).

In some airports it also reduces total queueing time, though in others it just moves you from queuing at the boarding desk to queueing at a bus stop/stairwell/skybridge.

Boarding first is desirable because overhead bin space is v. limited. If you board last, it will be gone.

This is much, much less true in first or business class in my experience. (Same number of bins for fewer seats for a given aisle length.)

I’ve personally found that it depends on the aircraft. It’s especially true in a widebody where economy doesn’t walk through the same cabin, and not so true on a narrowbody with few seats.

> Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable)

As someone who customarily boards early (due to fare class or airline status), I can tell you one solid reason, overhead bin space. If flight attendants would ensure folks put their bags on their row and the gate attendants ensured bags weren’t too large, this would be less an issue, but I routinely see folks fairly early in the boarding process putting their bags in rows in front of theirs, even though their row’s bin is empty or at least not full.

The worst example of this was my flight a few weeks ago. I was the first to board that flight, followed by another customer in first class and her family. The woman proceeded to put all her kid’s and husband’s luggage in the first class overhead despite her being the only one in that cabin (her seat was via an upgrade, not that it matters). The rest of the passengers in first class (besides me, thankfully) had to put their luggage in the first rows of economy due to her actions which had a ripple effect down the plane. Probably extended boarding and deboarding time by at least five minutes, all because of what I’d call selfish behavior.

Pretty much this. When I’m flying business I actually would rather board at the end, but I also don’t want to check my bag because it’s a hassle to retrieve and the contents are thrown several meters. If I could guarantee there was space in the overhead for my bag or if it was loaded for me, I’d board last.

Business class overhead space is often reserved for business class, even on domestic flights. That space doesn't usually fill up completely, so you have a lot more leeway in boarding.

> That space doesn't usually fill up completely, so you have a lot more leeway in boarding.

Maybe the airlines I fly are just the worst examples, but I frequently fly business/first both domestic and international and the overheads are always full, usually due in part to passengers not in that cabin.

What airlines do you fly? Delta is pretty aggressive about keeping economy baggage out of business even on domestics. I can’t imagine anyone even trying on an international. More to the point, I rarely have overhead problems on international flights (actually, I don’t think it has ever been a problem). Only domestic legs are problematic, mainly smaller 737s and 320s.

United predominantly.

I strongly despise people like that. If you add up lost time for all other passengers and compare that to won time for her and her family (less time waiting at the baggage claim) this ends up massively weighted against her behavior. non the less her behavior is actually rational and optimal from a standpoint of game theory. At least under current conditions (bag size not checked and enforced up front). This is in my books a classic example of 'tragedy of the commons'.

As long as egoistic behavior is the optimal strategy we will not see a significant change in behavior.

It can only be changed by changing the surrounding rules and conditions.

So you strongly despise someone for being a rational actor within a broken system?

My guess is that his dislike stems from the fact that this lady only made things better for herself and her family, and not GP, or anyone else on the flight.

If everyone can't do it (bringing more luggage than will fit above you) then doing that seem like you're doing it because you're better than everyone else, which is offensive to most people for good reason. If her whole family had flown first class, that'd be a different story. (They'd probably still be annoyed at the family for basically cancelling out some of the perks of paying extra for flights, though.)

Society doesn't operate only on rationality... https://xkcd.com/1499/

Think of it as first class seats giving the optionality to board at any time (not to mention those free drinks and snacks).

Also, because first class is smaller, you spend less time standing in the jetway and airplane aisle.

Part of the annoyance of boarding isn't just the total time it takes from when they open the gate door until when it's done. It's the amount of standing up, holding your luggage, shuffling forward a bit, and wondering when the person in front of you will move.

Use driving as an analogy. Suppose you get out of a doctor's appointment at 3pm and are meeting someone to see a movie at 6pm. During those 3 hours, the only two activities you can do are kill time on your phone (either lingering in the doctor's office lobby or sitting in the movie theater lobby) and drive. Do you leave at 3pm and avoid rush hour, or do you wait until the last minute and get in traffic? Either way, you're going to wait 3 hours, so you're not saving time, but one is less stressful.

Yes that does sound nice and I agree that the first option would feel better. However if someone offered me the choice between being able to do the first, and say, a new Macbook Pro 16", I would take the computer every time. I think even if I were a billionaire I would rather keep my few thousand dollars and suffer the indiginities of economy, but of course I'm not, nor can I know how my values would change if I were a billionaire.

If you fly a lot on long hauls, you'll quickly succumb to economy class syndrome if you spend all your time there. Once or twice a year, it is now problem, but not being able to sleep very well for 11 hours straight gets old quickly, and there is only so much content to go there in their entertainment system (if you are a frequent flyer, you've seen all of it)...not to mention your butt and legs just start getting sore after awhile.

Even though I'm not really a frequent flyer, I generally buy business class when they are on sale. E.g. Beijing to Bali on Hong Kong Express for $900 roundtrip (vs. $500 for economy), or Beijing to LA on ANA for $2000 last minute one way (vs. $1500 for economy, and since I was moving, it was tax deductible at the time). You can find some good deals, especially in Asia, and the experience can be worth it.

Boarding first doesn't need to justify the full first class price difference. It's a small peel in a pricey bundle deal that includes much better perks.

> although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

Carry-on space. I have yet to see a truly full flight where at least some carry ons aren't gate-checked.

> Business and 1st class make a lot of money for airlines. Not letting them board first (although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable) would devalue their tickets and make less profit for the airline.

Seems like you can model this as equivalent to boarding two airplanes. Boarding first class is like boarding one airplane, and when you're done with that you start the clock ticking on boarding coach, which is like the second airplane.

In which case, you have two airplane-boarding sub-problems, and the number you care about is the sum of the times. You can apply whatever strategy to both subproblems, then you can reduce both numbers that you're adding, and you still get a smaller sum.

Maybe it's not as much of an efficiency gain as doing away with the first class and coach separation, but it should still be an efficiency gain.

> although personally I've always wondered why this is desirable

Business class seats are nice and you get a swanky drink/treat to enjoy after boarding. When in economy, I always hang back during boarding unless I'm worried about overhead, but in biz it is really different. And they often board through their own door anyways (if international).

I love CGP Grey's animations, and you can clearly tell this one involved a lot of work.

The problem with his analyses is that they're frequently wrong because he look at problems in a very academic way and severely oversimplifies them.

For example, his video about cars going through intersections makes perfect sense in a simulated world on a computer. But it falls down instantly in real life because it presumes that every car is identical, with the same mechanical characteristics, the same acceleration capability, the same connectivity (for the magic fictional traffic control signal), the same latency, they never break down, there are never any external factors at an intersection, and on and on and on.

Similarly, his plane boarding simulation falls down as soon as someone shows up late, or in a wheelchair, or with a bum leg, drunk, a baby, luggage that the wheel has fallen off of, etc...

He seems to live in a world where there is no difference between theory and reality. I still watch his videos, but I consume them as entertainment, not as documentaries.

> Similarly, his plane boarding simulation falls down as soon as someone shows up late, or in a wheelchair, or with a bum leg, drunk, a baby, luggage that the wheel has fallen off of, etc...

All of these things occur in non-ideal boarding scenarios as well. I don't see how they affect his solution more so than what we currently have.

It’s sort of like comparing two algorithms and using the one that has the simplest best case time complexity without considering the average case or that your particular real-world use might actually be a worst case.

But ultimately the same problems affect both algorithms in the same way. So the best case algorithm will be slower in the real world, but should still be faster than the other cases.

Only if all algorithms are affected the same way by the same external factors, which simply doesn't happen.

It's like when a Toyota and a Freightliner crash into the same wall. They both crashed at the same speed, why is one damaged more than the other?

You can come up with endless scenarios to justify it, but the fact is you can't design something that will deal with all of them. So you design for the typical scenario.

Maybe there is an algorithm that boards a plane faster when there are 2 handicapped people, 3 drunks, and 1 person being late. But how typical is that? And is it realistic to design the whole algorithm around that? I would argue it isn't.

Real flights have those things in some numbers and a model probably ought to attempt to account for them, since, as you noted in a separate post I can’t seem to find now, they’ll affect the model negatively. The goal isn’t to find the best number of late people and wheelchairs. It’s to be able to board real flights as quickly as possible and every real flight I’ve ever seen, except the flight I took shortly after 9/11, has had some number of strollers, wheelchairs, or what have you.

I don't think we can make that claim. There is no reason to believe the problems will affect both algorithms the same way. Some may be more fragile or failure resistant to different failure modes.

Except this is not true. Quicksort is typically faster than mergesort, but worst case it can be very much slower. The worst case does not affect both algorithms the same way.

But we are not talking about quicksort or mergesort, either way it helps prove my point. Typically faster is an interesting way of describing something. What is typical? 80% of the time?

Your point is that all algorithms respond the same way to inputs, and a counterexample helps prove it?

That wasn't my point - we are talking about a specific scenario here, not "all"

An algorithm sees its best time complexity over some percentage of the input space. Over some other percentage it sees its worst time complexity. And, on average over the entire input space, it sees its average time complexity. The algorithms are necessarily different in what those best, average and worst are, and importantly, over what parts of the input space those categories apply. If they weren't, we'd call the algorithms mathematically equivalent and it wouldn't matter which one you chose. And if they all handled 'problem' data equally, we'd see that they all have the same performance penalty between best and average and average and worst. They don't. Sometimes best and average are equal. Sometimes worst and average are equal. Sometimes all three are equal.

If your data is truly random, you should pick the algorithm with the best average time complexity. Is your data random? Almost certainly not. It might be 'random enough', or it might not be. A real world data set may fall completely within the best case of algorithm A and the worst case of algorithm B, even if the average case of B is better than the average case of A.

In this case, the data points that are most likely to negatively affect an algorithm are specifically being excluded from the model. Far from comparing even the average case, we're comparing best cases. We aren't using a 'real world' data set. So it's an interesting simulation, but it isn't enough to reach any conclusions at all.

I was under the impression that his conclusions come from the same sort of papers we're discussing in the OP, and that the animation is just a demonstration of the effect. Some real-life issues should be addressed in future studies, for sure; for airplanes, it's probably important to model "families" that sit, board, and deplane together. But just listing the variables not accounted for in the study or video isn't scientific criticism, you have to do your own work to actually demonstrate that it makes a difference.

You are correct. But his videos aren't presented as "this is possibly the best way, and it should be further investigated." They're presented as "This is the best way because I say so, even though I haven't done any testing but I'm a college professor and on YouTube so you should believe me."

They're presented more like "This is the best way", the rest of your characterization is unfair.

This doesn't invalidate your core criticism, but there's no need to accuse him of trying to impose authority.

I've watched a lot of CGP grey and I just learned now, from you, that he's a college professor. I may have missed or forgotten it being mentioned a couple times, but I'm sure it's not front and center as you imply.

Being on YouTube is, tautologically, obvious from being on YouTube, but it's also necessarily obvious from being on YouTube, and a similar accusation of appeal to authority could be constructed for any other medium, e.g."it's best because I say so and I have a blog".

One thing airlines should pay closer attention to is amount/size of carry-on luggage to better match overhead bins capacities. I've seen people bringing clearly oversized roller bag, AND big laptop bag, AND big purse, and then spending a lot of time trying to place all of that in bins, or under preceeding seat, blocking the aisle while doing so.

That's also the main reason why I try to board as fast as possible - to ensure that there's still space for my luggage.

The conclusions are pretty obvious, I guess they just needed to simulate it?

The fastest boarding I've ever experienced was something Cathay Pacific did a few years ago. In the boarding area they had three lines with a bunch of section signs and an a couple employees hassling/sorting people between the lines. The rear of the plane sections were at the front of the line. I'm guessing they were just counting how many people were in each section?

Either way, when they opened the doors, they just picked one of the lines and the employees walked down the line scanning everyone's boarding pass and then the whole line proceeded to board the 777 (dual isle). Then they repeated the process with the next line after a short pause.

Which works out to back to front boarding of 1/6th of the passengers in a section at a time. When it was my turn the entire line pretty much just walked onto the plane bumped around a bit in the section and sat down.

Quite a shock given the hour long boarding AA can sometimes pull off with their messed up boarding order based on miles and cabin front to back...

The fastest boarding I experienced was years ago somewhere in Asia (Singapore, maybe), where three lines boarded through three doors: Two on the terminal side, and one on the far side.

I was in the far-side group, and we had to hike up a lot of stairs and then through a jetway, presumably over the aircraft (hard to know with no windows), and then down a bunch of stairs and then enter the aircraft, where we could see people boarding from the other side.

Very fast, except for the long hike. But this was before people put everything and the kitchen sink into over-sized carry-ons, so it wasn't arduous.

> put everything and the kitchen sink into over-sized carry-ons

Which they only do because free checked is going away. You get what you optimize for, after all.

IMO people pack way too much shit traveling anyway, but I'm sure here most are familiar with the onebag concept. I've no way to convince someone other than actually going on a trip with them and happily walking next to them while they drag their wheeled luggage around.

> Which they only do because free checked is going away.

I pack everything in one piece of carry-on luggage, and I'd do that even if checked luggage were free (which it often is).

It means I don't have to take extra time or wait in a line to check a bag at the source airport, I don't have to take time at baggage claim at the destination airport (just walk straight from the gate to ground transportation), and I don't have any risk of losing my luggage (or having it badly repacked after a search, or having something go missing).

However, it's also a massive pain in the arse having to fiddle around with removing various electronics and liquids while going through the security gate.

I've actually started to opt for checking my bag whenever possible, even when I could get away with taking it into the cabin, and taking the minimum possible through security to avoid the too-frequent holdups. My experience is that this has added a maximum of about 10 minutes to my trip, waiting for luggage to be unloaded.

While I don't think it should be a thing (nobody should have to deal with such hassles), Global Entry / TSA-Pre removes most issues at the security checkpoint.

At many airports, checking a bag can add 20-30 minutes of waiting in line at the departure airport, leaving aside baggage claim time.

Yup, I haven't checked a bag in a decade and have been consistently baffled by my friends that do; this decade was roughly my 20s, so it excludes a lot of the good reasons for checked bags like physical limitations or young children). Who wants to deal with checkin lines upon boarding (and get to the airport that much earlier), then get off of an international flight and wait an arbitrarily long time for your bags, with an unreasonably high chance of them having been lost?

One reason, from my 20's, since you declared that parameter: The sort of clothing one wears to a cultural event doesn't fit in a carry-on. There's no way I was going to show up for an opera in Vienna or a symphony in Prague in jeans and a drip-dry t-shirt.

This isn't true at all, in my experience. I've been on multi-leg trips that included weddings and formal events as well as beach time, which meant packing formal shoes and clothing (in a couple cases a full suit) along with enough t-shirts to deal with the humidity of a beach, shorts, flip-flops, trunks, etc. My 40L backpack has so far been accepted as carry-on in 15+ different countries, and I carry a small tote bag[1] for overflow/on-the-plane items (usually laptop+book, but occasionally shoes). Hell, right know I'm visiting some (lovably) stodgy family in the old country, which means I have to pack formal clothing for the inevitable trips to the country club and various events... And I spent a few days on the beach in Thailand right before this. I was able to do all of this while carrying half a dozen gifts that took up probably 30% of my bag.

Your comment just reinforces my bafflement and my impression that people subject themselves to checked baggage because they've simply never bothered to look into the alternative. I'm sure there are many people for whom checking a bag works out fine, but the bafflement comes from the many people (including some I know personally) who hate the hassle but haven't gotten around to trying carry-on-only travel.

[1] It's the New Yorker tote bag, in case anyone is familiar with the dimensions

My carry-on is a garment bag, which carries quite a bit of formal and informal clothing.

I tend to be of the opinion that roll-aboard "carry" ons are a big part of the problem with overhead space. Yes, some people can't really carry loads. But most would be better off with soft-side travel backpacks and other soft carry-ons that tend to be more space efficient and flexible. (Especially given that there's less need for luggage that can keep suits wrinkle free than in times past.)

> Which they only do because free checked is going away.

They also do it to avoid the scenario where your bag simply ends up on the wrong plane. It's unlikely these days because of technology, but it's hard to shake the worry once this has happened to you three or four times.

Even on Southwest, which gives you two free checked bags, I see a lot of other passengers flying with small carry-on suitcases. I suppose they're worried about speed or loss/damage of their luggage, but I don't really know.

Fear of damage is fair. I'm flying United to San Diego for a little Motorcycle vacation and they will either let me check a bag or not at all - I can't buy a carry-on slot. Essentially I can bring only a carry on. I sure as shit am not checking my Motorcycle helmet, they'll destroy it. So I'm going to try traveling with nothing but my helmet, Kindle, toothbrush, and medicine :) it'll be an adventure, but fuck United.

Reminds me of loading onto a Ryanair flight in Edinburgh; the labyrinth walk to the door that put you onto the tarmac a short walk from the stairs. Loaded back to front, and since there are no assigned seats on Ryanair it's just like getting on the (air)bus.

Whenever I've flown Ryanair, the seats were assigned and printed on the boarding pass (but you had to pay if you wanted to chose your seat). When was this time that they weren't?

2008

Not only there are assigned seats on Ryanair (since years at least), but you have to pay to select one and they purposely place groups/families separately to make them choose to pay extra.

Most (low cost) airlines I flew used one, or two at most, of the door. It would work even better if you could use doors on both sides of the plane.

The problem is that usually, in most airports, this requires more than a single jet bridge per plane or walking on the tarmac

> Quite a shock given the hour long boarding AA can sometimes pull off with their messed up boarding order based on miles and cabin front to back...

Not to mention the people who just say "F it" and board whenever they like it. For as often as I've seen them "rejected", I've equally seen them just waved on.

Part of the issue is the weird way airlines label the groups. If you're not familiar with Delta's process and have "boarding group 1" printed on your boarding pass, why wouldn't you go up first? (I think boarding group 1 boards seventh, after people needing extra time, active duty military, first/Diamond, business, Comfort+, Sky Priority. It's possible that some of those are combined; I'm not entirely sure.)

I booked 4 flights with Cathay not sure what to expect, but it was a pretty good experience all round. Boarding was a non issue, fast and on time. Everything else was perfectly functional, if economical. The staff were excellent.

I didn't appreciate the mid flight catalogue advertising for beauty products though. Talk about a captive audience. That only happened on the leg between Japan and HK, I hope it's not common...

AirBaltic did this until very recently in the most annoying fashion. I wrote them a nastygram about it and I suspect many other people did so too because the last two flights I was on were pleasantly quiet.

Whichever junior marketeer came up with that campaign should be forced to listen to their own work product for a day or two in succession. I'm sure that would get them to change careers.

> Whichever junior marketeer came up with that campaign should be forced to listen to their own work product for a day or two

I’d be willing to wager quite a lot that the marketing genius who wanted that was not junior.

I've had advertisements on Air Canada flights on their seat-back TVs/plane PA system.

I follow up by complaining to the advertisers and explaining what a bad impression it is.

Better than US airlines trying to sell credit cards mid-flight.

I feel so, so bad for air hosts and hostesses that are suddenly finding themselves in the role of salesperson. What a shitty, completely unrelated added job responsibility, that's completely counter to their actual job's objective. Hard to get passengers to like you and make their flight enjoyable (and thus listen to you when it's time to listen to you) if you've just finished trying to sell them a credit card.

I miss air industry regulation.

That's pretty good, its a shame all the optimal solution theories are only considering single aisle planes.

This article and CPG Grey's dont even factor in dual aisle, or multiple boarding doors.

You know what I think is weird about all this discussion?

Boarding and deplaning really don’t take that long, most of the time.

Think 15 or 20 minutes max.

It’s one of those things where it feels incredibly long and arduous. It feels interminable. But that has something (IMO) more to do with the psychological experience of flying.

The actual time cost is fairly small, especially compared to so many other wastes of your time when flying (getting to the airport on crowded roads, requirements to arrive early, arriving early because of fear of security taking a long time, getting through security, requirements to get to the gate early, sitting in the plane at the gate, sitting on the plane waiting to take off, sitting on the plane on the other end, possibly being on a shuttle bus connecting plane to gate, waiting for luggage, waiting for cab or shuttle or rental car ...) not to mention the time of the actual flight.

The reason this time is given so much attention isn't for the impression of the passengers, it's to minimize turnaround time to keep the aircraft making money.

If you only look at the material side of what people are paying for: boarding a few minutes faster, deplaning a few minutes faster, comfier seats and better food, etc, then I completely agree that it doesn't make sense to pay an extra $1000 or so for a plane ticket. Here's what I think people do pay ridiculous amounts of money for: status, and ensuring they do not have to interact with normals. Air travel used to be a luxury activity in itself, but prices today mean that you are basically stepping onto a dirty sky bus (more so for some airlines than others). This is of course a generalization, but rich people do not take buses.

(This doesn't really apply to business travelers, as their companies need to pay for these upgrades to make the job travel less unattractive)

Agreed. Almost the definition of premature optimization. :)

15-20 minutes is huge for an airline. This isn’t about travelers.

> Boarding and deplaning really don’t take that long, most of the time.

The problem is if you have a connection--then 20 minutes matters.

Often you get stuck behind someone who can't lift or move their too heavy carryon but doesn't care because they're at terminus.

15-20 minutes standing holding your luggage with no air conditioning.

I think it's just that it's unpleasant time in comparison to all those other things, so it's more ripe for optimization. When I fly, I read or relax or run errands on the train or Uber, breeze through checkin due to not checking luggage, stroll through security and customs due to Global Entry, relax at the gate and do whatever I'd like, and am generally well-prepared to get some reading done or relax on the plane. The only parts of the process where I can't focus (or get lost in my thoughts) are checkin and security, which are already pretty tightly optimized.

By contrast, boarding and deplaning is a particularly uncomfortable form of hurry-up-and-wait, where your mind isn't your own because you need to keep one eye/ear on your surroundings, and you're standing with your luggage and shuffling forward at random intervals.

It's no surprise that people don't consider time spent boarding/deplaning the same as time (eg) at the gate, and that obvious inefficiencies are particularly rankling.

I tried to paint a vivid picture of the differences, but the truth is I don't personally mind boarding/deplaning too much, for some reason. I just understand where the focus comes from.

If airlines really wanted to speed up boarding they should stop offering free carry on but charge for checked in luggage. Ryanair realized this now and for their cheapest category you aren’t allowed to put luggage in the overhead bins (or rather, the ticket allows only bags that fit under the seat in front).

As for boarding, airlines should have staff in the plane shoving people into the rows with their coats on and their carryons in their laps. Better yet, they should have signs in the gate instructing people to have their coats in their hands and not on them (just like the TVs at security). Once everyone is in the cabin, people can get up and use the overhead bins without blocking the aisle.

> they should stop offering free carry on but charge for checked in luggage

I tripped while reading here. It reads to me like "stop offering free carry on COMMA but charge" of which I couldn't make sense. Suggestion, "stop offering free carry on, and charge..."

This reminds me of the book The Goal by Eli Goldratt. It's fictional, but there's a story about a boy scout troop that goes on a hike, and there's an overweight kid named Herbie who hikes the slowest. The troop leader teaches everyone that the entire group as a whole will reach the top faster (and stay together) if they keep Herbie in the front.

When you have a bottleneck step in your process, the whole end-to-end process will run the most smoothly if everything else matches pace with the bottleneck.

In the military on rucks, they often follow this tactic too. Granted I'd imagine you don't want to be the slow one.

We would rotate who got to be at the front on long treks (Philmont). As the 'head' of the snake, you take ~100 paces or whatever, then you step off to the side of the trail until the entire group has passed you. You are now the 'tail' of the snake. The new head of the snake then steps off after 100 paces and everyone passes them etc. The side benefit is that everyone gets to take short rests as they wait for the 'body' of the snake to pass them.

Already with our inefficient boarding process there's often a 15-30 minute wait to get permission to fly. Boarding isn't the bottleneck.

The point is that within the boarding process, the slower (elderly, disabled, traveling with children etc.) people are the bottleneck, and letting them board first actually makes the boarding process take less time. The pilot can't even start waiting to get permission to fly until after everyone's boarded.

Did you work at Amazon? It's a cult classic hazing ritui there. Managers tell reports to read it and then joke about terrible a novel it wrapped around a few cute stories like that one and the paperclip passing game.

Ha! No, Microsoft--I was in the hardware supply chain group for a while, and The Goal was a common conversation topic there. I heard a few people call process bottlenecks "Herbies."

Airlines don't just sell the tickets. They sell convenience and comfort. And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space. So they want premium customers to get dibs on overhead bin space, which means letting them board first. The slowest part of boarding sometimes is the tail (economy and late-arrivals) looking for bin space, or worse, having to bring their carry-on back to the door for gate checking.

To make boarding faster the airlines will first have to commit to not letting economy passengers have carry-on. Until they are willing to do this, there will be no improvement.

> And they have to mediate a limited resource shared by passengers: overhead bin space.

If only there were other places that luggage could be stored. Somewhere for larger bags that aren't needed during the flight. Somewhere that could be loaded independently of the passenger door. If such a place existed, airlines could give incentives to have passengers place baggage there instead of overhead.

Or airlines could do the exact opposite, charge extra for the less convenient method, and slow down the boarding process as a result.

>charge extra for the less convenient method

Not having to wait for my bag when I get off the plane, and having 0 chance of losing the bag, is worth quite a bit. And by charging, they do reduce the number of people with them.

Source: The overheads on Spirit (which only allows a personal item) always have space, even on full flights.

I'm a frequent flyer. I'll pay extra for carry-on space if need be (and I do, every time, even when flying airlines where I have no frequent flyer status). Checking luggage for me means: risking loss/theft, spending extra time (money) checking it and then waiting for it at the carousel. I often fly with two laptops and I don't want to make my backpack too heavy, but also I don't want to check either laptop.

>will first have to commit to not letting economy passengers have carry-on.

Some do in a limited way. The lowest tier of economy (I think United calls it Economy Basic, aka steerage minus) allows you a "personal item"--which you basically have to allow because you can't force people to check medicines, etc.--but no carry-on.

It's really odd to me that airlines decided to charge for checked bags rather than overhead bin storage. Even before it was common to charge for checked bags, almost everyone I've ever met preferred carry-ons whenever possible. And when they "enforce" carry-on bag size limits, the worst thing they'll do is gate-check your bag for free, which is still much better than checking a bag and having to wait there half an hour for it to show up on the carousel anxiously wondering whether you were the lucky one whose baggage they lost today. (Hell, it's arguably the best case scenario, though does still cost you a few minutes waiting.) It's like they go out of their way to give me every possible incentive to be that obnoxious person that always brings his obviously oversized on every flight.

I agree! The airlines would do better to offer free checking for one bag and charge a fee for carry-on (and not oversell carry-on space). Then they could shave off a minimum of 5 minutes for boarding, and maybe much more (10 minutes? 15?). Saving 10 minutes in boarding time may mean one more flight/day for some routes.

Southwest should do this. They are almost the most optimized airline since you can have 2 bags free and a psuedo random boarding process. I imagine that overhead bin space is probably not as contentious on Southwest flights anyway.

Ryanair solved that problem by charging for having a carry-on. They only sell the space they have.

Often, especially if I have checked baggage, I wait until the bitter end rather than getting onboard early or waiting in line. If there is no room for my roller-bag, gate checking is usually free.

I've seen this optimization. It makes more sense for the airline to just have free checked bags and charge a premium for a carry on. I think one issue is that they don't want the commotion at the gate check. I saw an airport pre-screener once tell a guy his carry on was too big and the dude was livid. This wasn't TSA and the guy wasn't an airline employee either.. I think he was just working for the airport. I would've been livid too.

So the boarding problem is complex optimization problem for the airlines but with various paradoxical qualities.

A) Airlines benefit from having tiered costs for tickets because their ideal situation is having minimal costs but charging each customer what the customer is willing to pay.

B) But of course, reducing total load times reduces the time planes spend on the ground. This isn't just reducing travel time but also reducing the number of planes the airline needs to take N passengers to their destination. Obviously, airlines care about their own time-costs more than the passenger's time costs - why the airline briskly takes their passenger to some out of the way hub and then has the passenger wait five hours of their own time.

So between these factors you get a pretty complex problem. That thing is that when you get into such complexity, the best strategy can be nothing more than incremental, greedy optimization. IE, it's surprising complex "best approaches" aren't being tried here.

Deplaning always feels slower to me. You usually get an announcement about twenty minutes before touchdown that you're inbound. I notice virtually nobody prepares during or after this announcement. If I took anything out of the overhead, I re-stow it and get the small items I have together. When we land, I turn off airplane mode, put my phone in my pocket, grab my backpack and am ready to go. Others like to eat a snack, make a phone call, examine every possible object in their bag, and do just about everything but exit the plane. Like seriously, do that in the terminal when you're not a blocker on others exiting the aircraft.

As a bigger guy, I scowl at people wanting to remove overhead bins. I'd rather put my bag there and have the space under the seat for my legs. Airlines need to understand the more uncomfortable they make the flights, the more likely I am to take a train.

I always thought it would be best to let the window seats board first, ordered back to front to minimize waiting for stowing baggage, then middle seats back to front, then aisle seats back to front. Families traveling together would obviously complain, but it would probably get the plane boarded much faster overall.

WestJet used to board window seats first (and those traveling with someone in a window seat). I always found that much faster than other airlines. Alas, they stopped the practice years ago.

CGP Grey addresses this in the video (commented elsewhere here). This strategy minimizes the Seat Shuffle, but it turns out that isn't the major slowdown when boarding, so overall this is only slightly faster than boarding in random order.

I would like to see the carry-on to go away. I understand the consequences would be quite harsh at first, but I do believe the airports and airlines would eventually figure out better ways to handle luggage and we would all be better for it.

I can't find a lot of information online, but I remember an airline employee telling me that the "P90 SLA" for handling baggage at big European airports is 20 minutes.

I don't think there's a lot of room for improvement, let alone a dramatic increase of the volume of checked baggage.

The improvement doesn't need to come only just in form of time to luggage but also in the experience for offloading and pickup it up. Also reliability is quite an issue (if you ever flew through CDG you know what I'm talking about).

I would like to see some more innovation around luggage handling.

The fastest boarding and deplaning I have experienced is at Burbank airport. It is done with 2 open doors: front and rear - rather than just 1 door boarding only front to rear.

I'm sure it is the same at other small airports as well...

Do you exit to the tarmac or did they have two jetways? Two jetways make sense but you need the plane to come in horizontally. Might be a good idea for new airports.

exit to the tarmac

> The researchers ended up with another counter-intuitive result: it's actually 28 percent more efficient to let slower passengers board first.

So is it faster or more efficient ?

What if we have faster-only and slower-only planes ? Won't that be even FASTER ?

Also: > This test was conducted in a mock Boeing 757 fuselage, located on a Southern California soundstage, with 12 rows of six seats and a single aisle. Five methods were tested using 72 passengers of various ages.

Is this really science or just a math excercise ?

It would be nice if they could also allow people to board and depart from the front and back doors of the plane. I've done this from the tarmac on a Frontier flight once in the South Terminal in Austin, and since you walk out on the tarmac old-school style, they have two ramps for onloading and offloading. Makes things much quicker. I don't know if the jet bridges could be extended to allow for front and back door access, but it would be awesome if it were possible.

Lots of European airports (including LHR) do this - air bridge to the front door and steps to the back door.

Southwest has sort of figured this out. First of all, they use random boarding, which is almost the fastest, and the fastest of the viable options (good luck getting people to board alternate rows).

They also interleave slow and fast passengers. They let handicapped people board, then the first 1/3 of passengers, then families with kids, and then the rest of the passengers.

By the last 1/3 of the passengers, it's mostly center seats, which means high parallelism for those passengers.

"good luck getting people to board alternate rows" Do you know right now if boarding group D is people from the back of the plane, people with window seats or odd rows?

Not sure which method each airline uses but the problem is that all of them let their premier members board first regardless of seat, and they let groups board together regardless of boarding group, so it screws the whole thing up.

The US airlines’ system of roughly allowing people to board in the order corresponding to how much they pay (with up to 9 distinct groups) looks a little silly now.

If you are the airline it seems to work out since you are actually turning this into a money making opportunity?

The real issue is if the slow boarding is costing the airline more than the money than they earn from charging from upgrades. Also consider that the people paying for expensive seats might be sad if they don't get to board early which again might affect airline revenue.

I think airlines is pretty happy with the current situation, and that the passenger boarding speed is not costing them money so this is all good. This is just an (somewhat educated?) guess.

Yeah, as long as you are "overlapping" boarding and servicing, I think the servicing of the aircraft takes longer than the boarding/unboarding, so it does not actually delay the rate at which the aircraft can be turned around. The action of boarding the aircraft takes 10 minutes longer, but it's 10 minutes that you were going to be sitting on the ground anyway while the plane is fuelled and loaded up with meals/etc.

The thing is, people are not paying extra just to board early, they're mostly paying for the bigger seat, more space, more personal service. The "priority boarding" is just icing on the cake, a "cable channels package" tactic thrown in to make the customer feel like they're not getting ripped off as much. Assuming that boarding is not in the critical path, airlines could adopt a faster boarding system and get the plane turned around faster without turning down that extra revenue.

Unless you are in first class,. boarding early is worse -- it's more time on the plane

If you are in first class you can do whatever you want and the airline will politely thank you. At least this is my experience when flying business or first class.

In general, the airline lets you board at your time or later

>Also consider that the people paying for expensive seats might be sad if they don't get to board early which again might affect airline revenue.

Consider they would be pissed if overhead bin space isn't available for them so they have to jet way check their carry-on luggage and then wait when they arrive or find overhead space further back the airplane which just leads to a cluster mess trying to deplane upon arrival.

Which is a little weird, because those who pay more get to board earlier... but why would anyone want to board a plane earlier?

Personally I would like to board at the last possible time, but I not going to un-board until the busiest people have left the plane.

This discussion always seems to me like such a tunnel-vision engineering mindset. Airlines are companies, they don't optimize for boarding throughout, they're optimizing for revinue. If they can charge more for a ticket that exempts you from a poorly-throughput-optimized boarding procedure, they'd better make sure it's poorly optimized.

The real problem is the carry on. Checked bags should be free. A carry on bigger than a small backpack should be expensive.

I'd like to enforce a rule that if it has wheels then you obviously can't carry it and it's not a carry on.

100% agree. Also, carry-ons are a major safety hazard in the event you have to evacuate the aircraft - a bunch of people will try to get their bags.

I would think the only thing that really matters is time to stow carry one. Everyone has a carry on, then late groups are asked to check it but everyone wants to see with their own eyes that there is no space or people put their roller in flat, when it clearly states to turn it on its side in newer planes with drop down overhead space.

Just design plane to facilitate boarding like this prototype :

https://images.vinted.net/thumbs/f800/046b0_M2bQ3jAEBTnELEZ6...

How about everyone deposits their carry on bags on carts in the gate waiting area, of the exact dimensions at the overhead bins. Then workers transfer them to the overhead compartments while cleaning crew is working. Finally everyone takes their seats without fuss.

How do they get their luggage back?

Cool idea. Wouldn't the carry-on bags be all over the plane though, and not necessarily anywhere near where you're sitting? De-planing in that scenario would be a nightmare.

There would need to be a separate system to mark your carry on bag with your seat number, so it could be in the bin relatively close to where you're sitting.

I was thinking the carts would be numbered just like the overhead bins. So the bags would be transferred exactly as you stowed them. Maybe even make the bins detachable so it's just "roll them aboard and snap them in". Though that could be heavy/unsafe/whatever.

I think it would unquestionably make boarding more efficient. Though thinking about it more I don't know if it would make it better, since it's now yet another extra thing that you have to do.

Too complicated. A gate is run by 1 or 2 people max.

They mention that boarding even rows first and then odd rows is also an improvement, but I've wondered whether 2 is actually the right periodicity. If we suppose a row consists of 6 people with roller bags, what we really want is to ensure that all 6 of these people can occupy the aisle without blocking anyone else from their row. So what if we used 10 instead of 2? I.e. first board everyone whose row number ends in 0 back to front, then everyone whose row ends in 1, then 2, and so on.

(I assume you could do even better by boarding window seats first, then middle, then aisle, but keeping rows together is much more family/group-friendly.)

I want them to just tilt the jet bridge down at a 75 degree angle through a hole in the roof of the plane, and then similarly tilt the cabin down at a 75 degree angle through a hole in the terminal roof when you land.

Related: CGPGray made a great video about boarding methods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

They should have people board a plane shaped capsule/container before, then when the plane is ready they push/dock the capsule/container into the body of the plane and you fly off.

That the "Herbies" should be in front comes as no surprise to anyone who's read Eli Goldratt's book, "The Race" - A book that transformed modern manufacturing methods toward the end of the 20th century. Of course, it was published way back in the dark ages of the 1980's so there's not a single reference to it here in the HN discussion - kind of a surprising ignorance in a supposedly learned crowd...

The problem with the boarding process is luggage. What airlines should do would be to make a checked bag free, and charge for overhead-bin use. That will reduce the boarding time by reducing the time to find bin space and stow luggage.

I suspect that airlines don't have an option to try this, because they all have co-branded credit card deals and frequent flier programs where some of the perks are free checked bags. I imagine that their credit card partners would not be happy about them devaluing the card by removing bag fees.

Also they won't do this because business flyers usually don't check bags. That way they won't be lost (by the airline) and so control over their destiny is retained by the flyer. I've done quite a few international trips, even week long trips, without checked luggage. Having your luggage get lost can be a real time consuming hassle and one you don't want to deal with when on a business trip.

Yes, agreed. I'm a business traveler, and I'm happy to pay extra to carry on if I have to.

There's a lot of focus on improving boarding times. But I haven't seen any attempts to improve deplaning. It's always via the slowest possible method.

Huh, I've always found deplaning fast except in the case of the person who's overhead is three rows back. There are ways to make it all faster but require some systemic changes to how we travel.

I wish airlines and airports would work at getting the checked bags off the damn plane faster. Whenever I check a bag I could have carried on, it feels like I'm being punished for it, as inevitably it comes out 1 minute after the every-30-minutes train departs.

I just wish they would reverse the trend of making checking luggage so damn expensive - once upon a time people most people didn't have wheely bags and it was much less unpleasant to board a plane.

Now a-days a lot of travelers will try and cram their entire luggage into a single wheely bag that they struggle to lift into the overhead bin.

Which slows down the boarding process, if anything they should be charging more for carry on board vs checked, it slows security too.

And also theoretically lowers the efficacy of the security - the bags we carry onto planes go through relatively weak scanners compared to the crazy ones they've got for checked luggage - it's why sending most film through the carry on scanners isn't a problem, while the checked scanners will distort even quite insensitive mediums - it's best to try and get it searched by hand though, if it's important to you.

> if anything they should be charging more for carry on board vs checked

Ryanair does that now.

I tend to side with the parent that it's more about the extra time than the extra money. Most of us who travel a lot get free checked bags with status on our preferred carrier or can usually expense the fee in any case. It's the waiting 30 minutes that's the issue. (Also reduced flexibility if travel goes sideways for some reason.)

This is very airline/airport dependent. I used to marvel at how fast my bags arrived at ABIA. Then I stopped flying for a while and when I resumed it seems like my bags would take nearly an hour. At first I thought it was some kind of additional security/whatever, but then I noticed that Southwest passengers that were deplaning at the same time I was would have their bags at the claim by the time they got there, while I would end up waiting 30+ mins for bags from my AA flights.

I started to pay more attention, and am 100% sure at least between AA and SW, it literally takes AA 4-5x longer at the same airport vs SW.

Fast turnarounds is actually a big part of Southwest's business model

Alaska Airlines has a 20 minute guarantee for bags; essentially, they promise to have your bag out and on the carousel within 20 minutes of the plane making it to the terminal. In practice this means (at most airports) that your bags arrive within a few minutes of you deplaning, using the restroom, and making your way to the baggage claim.

I've only been failed by them once, and they gave me a hundred bucks for the hassle ($50 per bag). Not a bad setup.

Supposedly masking this is part of how some airports are designed. They make you walk farther than you'd strictly have to, so that there's more time for baggage to get to baggage claim while you're walking.

Every sales person I've met knows never to check-in luggage, because it can range anywhere from 15 min to hours before you get bag back. It's just totally unreliable. A distribution of course, probably hanging closer to 15-30 min, but do enough flights and you'll always get bit by that tail..

I've been on flights where the attendant comes on and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, several passengers have connecting flights that they are in danger of missing. When we reach the gate, please let these passengers to the front of the plane." As soon as we're at the gate and parked, the seatbelt light goes off and every-freaking-body stands up in the aisles. Animals.

I've had this happen after landing due to a medical emergency. Please remain seated so that the medical personnel can get to the patient. This after a high speed decent with speed brakes on the whole way down. And still, everyone stands up. We weren't even at the gate, they had brought stairs to the back of the plane along with the emergency vehicle(s).

I took a RyanAir flight a few months back, and while there were many things to justify their reputation for being super-budget, one thing I did like was that they did boarding from both sides of the plane - They had a ramp at the rear exit as well as the front. It was one of the most convenient deplaning experiences I've had.

They do that all the time and it's not for passenger convenience: it's to shave minutes off the turnaround time and get more flights per day. They also almost never use an airbridge even in airports where that is standard. That's both for speed (Ryanair's guys on the ground can get the ramp there faster than the airport employees who drive the airbridge) and for cost savings, since airports charge for that service.

Honest question, are they skipping some other steps then? I wouldn't I expect deboarding and boarding to take longer than checks, fuel and cleaning.

Cleaning happens between deboarding and boarding, not in parallel.

Normally there are no particular checks that can't be done from the cockpit at turnaround.

Refuelling takes less time than that typically.

Since a lot of Ryanair flights are relatively short hops, that would at least cut down on refueling time, if not just fuel every couple of legs if the economics work out.

Cleaning is definitely sometimes abbreviated, I've been at the stand for a Ryanair flight in Leeds, seen the previous passengers get off, then they boarded us five minutes later (the inbound flight was late, so maybe not standard practice)

I've only encountered that once in the US but it was great as well -- Southwest at LGB (Long Beach, CA) had a separate set of air-stairs at the back door for boarding. I would guess it's not done more here because there are few airports that both board with stairs on the tarmac rather than a jetbridge, and also have non-regional (737+) jets where it would make sense.

You expect Americans to -gulp- climb stairs???

I'm guessing this is because the airlines feel it's easier to enforce boarding procedures than deplaning. hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order, but once the plane has arrived at it's destination, people want to stand up and get off as soon as they get a chance.

I think there is also pressure from connecting flights, if the plane is running late it's not uncommon to see people with really close windows jump the line in terms of deplaning - sometimes with the assistance of the flight crew.

I wish that was formalized as well. If you have a 5 hour layover, or need to wait for checked bags anyway, and rush to deplane, you’re just creating real problems for others with minimal benefit to yourself.

Yea - I peppered that statement with conditionals because a lot of people don't tend to abide by that politeness - I only made a connecting flight (via a woman at the gate re-opening the causeway door) when my connection was cut down from 1:20 to 15 in JFK due to inclement weather once... And JFK is terrible.

> hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order

I don’t know if it’s anticipatory anxiety or what, but I seemingly observe half the passengers stand and get in line at first call. And even queue up for the queued boarding calls.

I always get on toward the end and never had an issue finding space, but I understand it’s aircraft and airline dependent.

With the American domestics, its because all the frequent flyers are flying with large carry-on's and large personal items. Combined with all the non-frequent flyers trying to avoid baggage fees by packing everything in a large carry on.

If you don't get on fairly early after them, its likely you won't have a place to put your carry on, or it will end up being in the back of the plane/whatever forcing you to wait longer to get off.

hardly anyone is going to charge the gate to board out of order

Really? I see this all the time.

You can especially see it on airlines that have signs for group lines labeled 1-5 permanently displayed at the gate. As soon as the announcement goes out that the boarding process will begin shortly, a dozen people from Groups 4 and 5 will rush to their lines.

I've never understood this. I just sit back and relax until the mayhem calms down and then I just stroll on at the back of my group.

We all leave at the same time, so what's the rush? Then again, I don't ever travel with just a carry-on bag.

just my experience. I only fly Southwest, and as far as I can tell, people trying to board significantly out of order get scolded by the gate attendant and sent back to their place in line. swa is first-come first-served seating though, and they charge extra for low boarding pass numbers, so it might be a bigger deal to them.

Which airport? I've never seen a southwest gate attendant do this, or reject oversized carry on bags. It's really frustrating.

> As soon as the announcement goes out that the boarding process will begin shortly, a dozen people from Groups 4 and 5 will rush to their lines.

If you're boarding in a late group, overhead space will likely be at a premium, so you want the best chance to claim that space and not have to gate check.

Boarding methods in use approach the absolute worst approaches to getting everyone in a seat with a continuous stream of passengers boarding - having literally no organization would actually result in faster boarding than the zone based approaches.

As a result plane boarding gets a lot press I think, partially, just out of the hope that airlines stop acting so idiotically.

Boarding can't normally happen while the plane is being refuelled, which means passengers boarding the plane is the last thing that happens before the plane is ready to take off.

That means the faster they can board passengers, the sooner the plane can get in the air.

For deplaning it's not so urgent for the airlines to speed it up, as once the plane has been disenbarked there is still 40+ minutes of refuelling, cleaning, unloading and reloading baggage, etc.

> Boarding can't normally happen while the plane is being refuelled

It is possible, but with more rules and restrictions.

https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Refuelling_with_Passenge...

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/31197/is-it-nor...

It's quite common for fueling operations to be done with passengers on board for trans-oceanic flights (more fuel to load and longer boarding process).

Ah, thanks!

Priority boarding is now being used by most airlines as a class differentiator - a perk you can add to paying for a Comfort + or Economy Plus or First Class ticket.

They should go back to offering free checked bags. I don't get why everyone thinks we should remove carry-ons. People didn't haev so many carry-ons when checking was free. If they really gave a damn to get us on faster, they would board the back of the plane first. But then that means people who paid more for their seat get on last. I always felt that the slowness just boils down to greed on the airline's part.

I check my carry on for free every time I fly. I tend to be on Alaska, United, or Delta.

Which argues for the point you're replying to: why should an airline charge money at the ticket counter for a service you can get for free at the gate? It's perverse.

It would have been particularly interesting to see what would have happened had the study concluded the opposite: that letting slower passengers board first slows overall boarding. Which would have prevailed? Efficiency or the common decency inherent in allowing children and individuals with infirmities to board first?

I don't understand why boarding first is desirable, except for scarcity of overhead luggage space (heightened by checked bag fees and growing rollaboard bags) and those few first class folks getting a free drink while they wait.

Fix the storage issue and I'd want to board last - don't extend my time in those seats!

And those boarding last roll their bags down a full plane banging into seated people along with jostling them around by using the headrests as railings.

And it’s all the airline’s fault imo.

Overhead bin space is the big reason- give the somewhat (last 5 years-ish) changes to charging for the 1st checked bag, many who would have otherwise checked a bag are bringing on as carry-ons.

Many flights I've been on in past several years have had a real shortage of bin space, meaning getting on board early to make sure you're not the odd man out IS important (waiting for baggage carousel can take an extra 45 minutes)

It wasn't that recent. I was flabbergasted by an advertisement in an airport in 2013, which was trying to entice people into a membership with "Free checked bag? Don't worry. You'll get used to it." Advertising as extravagant exactly what used to be standard with the ticket.

> what used to be standard with the ticket

Base tickets are cheaper now however.

I can buy a checked bag for myself. What I can't do is change that back to being the social norm so that everybody can get on and off the plane in a reasonable amount of time.

> waiting for baggage carousel can take an extra 45 minutes

A few years ago, Houston airport authorities dealt with complaints that it took too long for travelers to get their bags after their flights. When the airport was built, the bag pickup locations were very close to the arriving gates, over time the airport got busier and people ended up waiting longer.

The fix was to move the pickup locations further from the arrival gates. This didn't change the length of time that it took to pull the bags from the plane and send them to the pickup location, but passengers noticed that their bags always showed up within minutes of getting to the pickup area. They essentially eliminated the waiting time by converting it into walking time.

Aha- that's a good anecdote.

Regardless of the perceived/ actual waiting time, however, it's MUCH better not to have to wait for a bag at all- going straight to curb or car rental and skipping that step is the only way to fly.

This is standard task scheduling problem (see CLRS section 17.5) with added constraint of slowing down processing as number of tasks finishes. This added constraint is justified by the fact that as people board they won't stay put in their seats in aircraft, they move move around increasing the time to board for passengers who haven't boarded yet.

This still remains a greedy problem and hence allowing slower passengers to board first will reduce overall time taken to board.

For me a part of it is indeed the overhead luggage space issue. But also I'd rather just be "on my way". If I'm sitting out at the gate, even if I'm reading something, I need to have part of my attention trained on the PA system, waiting for the boarding (or other) announcement. Once I'm on the plane and in my seat, I can read, put on headphones and watch something, whatever, without my attention divided, until we land.

It helps that I don't find airplane seats all that uncomfortable, at least no more uncomfortable than the seats in most gate areas.

Why is it better to board first? From my perspective, minimizing time spent in cramped air planes seats the better.

Fun side effect - if this method was adopted people might slow themselves down in boarding to board earlier resulting in even less efficiency.

> the common decency inherent in

Is it tho? I don't find it intuitively obvious that this is the more-human-decency position. It's a feel-good button sure, to give priority to those with more needs. It's just not clear to me whether or not children and people with infirmities actually want / benefit from boarding first.

I'm sure this is has some obvious reasons but I find it interesting that Japan can fill 800-1200 seats of the shinkansen in < 4 minutes

I get there are many differences, lots entrances, slightly wider isles. Still, it's fun to think about what it would take to do the same on a plane.

A train has less seats per door than a plane. Way less seats. It can also start moving before people have fully finished boarding (e.g. storing their luggage in overhead compartment).

What's astounding is that so much effort goes into finding the best boarding strategy, while really what airplane companies should be doing is collect the hand luggage that is not going to be open during flight (90%+ of it), and pre-load it somewhere else.

Tip #3 -- Parents, never use the pre-board

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/samantha-brown-travel...

As always, the best loading strategy is: get loaded at the airport bar. Flying is stressful!

Boarding for the major US carriers is so broken. My solution - NO OVERHEAD BAGS - period.

Spirit Airlines actually has the right idea on this - you pay to bring an overhead bag aboard, and they mean business about it being the proper size. I'm able to get away with not checking a bag on the vast majority of my flights. I'm out of the airport like 5 minutes after I exit the plane.

Do you find that Spirit flights board and deplane faster? People struggling to get overhead bags when I'm feeling very cramped and just want to leave is one of my pet peeves.

It seems faster than average. There are aspects to their service that are horrible; their website, a la carte pricing and "buy your bags" terminology are incomprehensible if you aren't already accustomed to it. But they're cheap, quick and never even ordered any 737 Maxes.

I'd only be ok with that if checked baggage came out immediately, with zero wait, and if there was zero incidence of lost baggage.

I know things are better these days, but I've been burned too many times to ever check baggage again.

> While passengers all have reserved seats

Southwest doesn't resemble that, heh.

I mentioned that to an Indonesian person (you know, where all the airliner accidents happen), and they puzzled over that for a minutes and said, "So ... like a bus?" :)

I don’t care about the speed of boarding. I get why airlines would though. I care about overhead bin space. It would be interesting to see if “slow boarders” also bring on more carry on luggage than average.

The MythBusters has an episode on plane boarding that was pretty interesting.

Results: https://mythresults.com/airplane-boarding

As long as seats are allocated by boarding class and boarding class is reflecting ticket price, no substantially better boarding / disembark pattern will be implemented

How does an airline know who is slower just by looking at them? Other than a few exceptions, of course. There are substantially many more who just take their time settling in.

Study is useless, as the number one factor in boarding is overhead bin space. This is the problem to solve, likely with paid slots that are right above your seat.

I've always thought we should board back to front. Do first class travelers really want to be stuck in a non moving plane longer than others anyway?

I've always thought this too, but according to the article, we are wrong.

> Steffen fully expected that boarding from the back to the front would be the most efficient strategy and was surprised when his results showed that strategy was actually the least efficient.

I imagine in the future people will seat in the airport at waiting seats platform and that platform will be inserted in the airplane like a cartridge.

Can we just get rid of boarding "zones" and arrest whichever MBA came up with them after reading one article on game theory.

I'm waiting for the inevitable preseating with the seat substructure slotted in and out of the plane as a single piece.

To help climate change we want inefficient boarding since there's less people flying

Ban overhead luggage and many issues go away...

Can't wait to get to the airport and hear them call for boarding:

"At this time we'd like to welcome all our slower passengers to the boarding process. Again, our slow, lazy passengers are welcome to board the aircraft."

"Group 1..."

<etc>

I'd assume they'd sugarcoat it by saying "seniors, pregnant women, and those with disabilities" or similar instead.

Slow and lazy is not the same.

I usually get in the plane with the last people, as I'm lazy to stand in line, but I'm doing the boarding itself fast, as I have done it many times in my life. I see other experienced travellers doing the same thing.

Another way to do it. Open the doors on the other side of the room. Wait until half the people are there. Quickly close the door and open another door to the plane.

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