The Fastest Way to Board a Plane: Randomly? | Hacker News Reader

The Fastest Way to Board a Plane: Randomly?

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16 pointsShenglong26 comments

It would help if they'd start being stricter about carry-on luggage, so we don't have people standing in the aisles desperately trying to cram a 42-inch rolling bag (the bane of my existence) into a 38-inch overhead compartment (or however big they are).

I always use a medium-sized duffel bag and a small backpack when going "carryon-only" for a long flight. The non-rigid bag makes it easier to stow and remove, making the whole system move a hell of a lot faster. Laptop goes in backpack for safekeeping.

It would also help if people were smarter about arranging their bags in the compartments. I can't really think of a way to unambiguously describe what I'm talking about, so I drew a crappy diagram: http://i.imgur.com/pILt1.jpg

Note that a compartment will hold three bags side by side just fine, as long as you put them in long-way-in. One idiot putting it in horizontally is like the guy dropping a straight-piece in Tetris on its side - congrats, you just shafted everyone, and potentially delayed take-off by 10 minutes because now we have to ferry one bag from the passenger compartment into the baggage one.

Thank you! I have seen this far too many times and it drives me crazy. Also, people then get stuffy when you start to rearrange the bags properly so more can fit in there. Aaaah!

While I can sympathize with you, I'm much more sympathetic about the outrageous check-in fees and the fact that people want to avoid checking if at all possible, even if it means cramming bags in.

On top of that the incidence of problems with checked luggage is seems much higher than reported. In the past year, me or a traveling partner, have lost two checked bags, had one misrouted, and had several items stolen. For this reason I consider anything I check purely optional and things that I know I have a reasonable chance to never see again.

My general rule -- if it fits, it fits.

Airlines need to do 2 things to speed up the boarding process:

1. Charge for more than one carry-on item, and do not charge for checked baggage.

2. Get checked baggage off the plane and to passengers in a reasonable amount of time.

I would be so down for number one. How annoying is it to go to your seat and have the overhead compartment seriously packed.

Especially if the items belong to people sitting >1 row away.

Reducing demand for overhead compartment space would actually seem to eliminate the entire reason people want to get on the plane as soon as possible. Apart from needing to jockey for space to store luggage (or, if in first class, get that first free glass of champagne) I don't understand why people are in such a hurry to move from a semi-comfortable waiting area to a completely uncomfortable airplane. The plane is not going to take off any sooner than scheduled, and in my experience it is pretty rare for a flight to be delayed due to slow boarding alone.

I actually have a frequent-flyer status that could get me on the plane very early in the process, but what I usually try to do instead is travel with only one carry-on bag, book an aisle seat, and wait until most everyone else in my 'zone' (presumably including the others in my row) is on the plane before I get in line.

Assuming that planes load rear-to-front, aren't you going to be stuck behind everyone in the zone that is boarding after you - that is, closer to the front of the plane?

You are also assuming that they are flying in cattle class. To me the whole point of frequent flier clubs are to spend as little time in the back of the plane as possible and use your miles to upgrade towards the front.

I totally agree that the best option is to be the last person getting onto the plane and ideally the first one off. Premium, Business, First class cabins tempt you on with their pre flight drinks.

So what? I have an aisle seat and I'm not in a particular hurry to get to it (remember, only one bag, and it's ideally small enough to go in front of my feet).

They talked about the best option but abandoned it due to a little bit of confusion:

People without big carry-on items get on first.

I wish they would have stuck with it.

This and window, middle, aisle ordered boarding have an obvious fault: it will breakup groups. This will cause confusion and stress, especially for families.

I'm actually thinking the entire storage system can use a redesign. It's mighty frustrating, when there's someone slow in front of you, who doesn't have the decency to move into the seats to let you pass. The isle should really not be the entry point for stored luggage - at least in terms of efficiency.

Also, people traveling together won't be assigned to different boarding groups if their reservations are "linked" in the airline's system.

You're referring to the "boarding group" system American uses. The parent comment is referring to window-middle-aisle boarding used by United.

"This and..."

Every airline I've flown on has allowed groups to go on together, even if they're in different boarding groups. Some may make you wait until the latest boarding group in your party, but even that's a bit rare, in my experience.

I would assume families with young kids are still allowed priority boarding (if that hasn't been deprecated recently).

> Virgin America, which sells early boarding as part of a perks package to customers who buy seats with extra legroom, experimented with giving early boarding to passengers who didn't bring large bags on board. That showed promise for speeding up boarding, but because it was unfamiliar to customers; it slowed down some people and offset gains, a spokeswoman said.

This bothers me to no end. I fly Virgin 1-2x roundtrips a month, and I've seen this program put into place very erratically. If they wanted to see results, they should have offered that on all flights for a certain period of time, instead of only here and there and mentioning it only once after boarding priority. A lot of the time, it was only mentioned when they wanted people on a full flight to gate check their carryons, and then they forgot to mention it again before boarding the first group (after priority/families/special needs) at all.

The other half of the problem was that some people decided that "one carryon that goes under the seat in front of you" meant 1 personal item plus 1 carryon (e.g. your usual limitation). So you basically had like 5-6 idiots with the largest carryon bags possible and a ginormous purse or shopping bag getting into the line with the people with only one backpack or carrying a laptop sleeve, and these weren't people with priority boarding or special needs. The Virgin employees never said anything to them, if they even noticed the extra bags.

I wonder why it offset gains, I really do.

I find it hard to believe this is anything more than a desperate attempt to add more fees and theoretically, more revenue.

For lack of better words, "Why so cynical?"

The speed of random boarding versus other viable methods is not a new result: I first heard about it years ago and I'm pretty sure it was old then.

(I emphasise viable because I'm pretty sure nothing can beat a perfectly strict back-to-front, but there's no way you're going to get that to actually happen with real customers.)

My real question is how changing boarding order affects the volume of overhead bins used. They kept emphasising that in the article, but I don't know what spacetime warping they are using.

My real question is how changing boarding order affects the volume of overhead bins used. They kept emphasising that in the article, but I don't know what spacetime warping they are using.

It could conceivably affect the way people stuff things into the overhead bins, so that baggage fits better, in some unconscious way.

Cynical, maybe.

But looking back at the history of the airlines and their increasing fees over the last decade or so doesn't make it seem so far fetched. It's no secret that airlines are looking to tack on fees in every nook and cranny possible to squeeze much needed money out of customers.

This could simply just be another nook, wrapped up in "research".

Sorry, I feel like I missed something. How is this different than Southwest?

Where as Southwest has open seating (no assigned seats) and boarding groups, this has assigned seating, with those seats being placed into groups at random rather than by location in the plane.

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