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Comment by russdill | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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).

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!

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.

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