And more obviously, the level of coordination required to make it work is just not worth it. Families flying together, babies, people with disabilities, etc., none are considered in the model.
-Groups can wait for later "Flush" es - there is flexibility since I think you can fit a little more than one person in the aisle per row.
Domestic flights on single aisle aircrafts, have several classes (first, extra, etc.), with different price ranges. Even emergency exit seats come with some attached benefits, like priority boarding. Good luck telling customers that they paid extra for an emergency window seat, but have to wait until more than half of the plane have de-boarded to exit.
That's exactly what already happens (at least in Europe), you don't get priority to de-board if you bought seats with extra leg room on the emergency exits, you have to wait.
I haven't seen any of them fined 25k. Proportionality matters, and getting off the plane as fast as (in your mind) possible isn't going to be realistically enforced.
This also reminds me of an article I once read in an in-flight magazine about this. It was saying how an airplane’s brakes work really really well, not only at 350km/h when landing, but also at 50km/h when taxiing to gate. It described an incident where during taxiing to gate after landing, somehow some animal managed to jump right in front of the plane forcing the pilot to apply max break, causing a passenger who was handling the overhead bin to die from the injuries.
Actually, just found a picture I took of the article, so here’s the original text. I always think of it when people stand up before the seatbelt sign is off.
> … But ignoring these rules can have serious conseances. For instance: Do you really remain seated until the plane comes to a complete standstill? German travel journalist Heige Timmerberg likes to tell the story of the dog that ran across the runway in Casablanca, forcing the pilot to slam on the brakes. Brakes that work well at 350 km/h, work well at 50, too - and one of the passengers who had just emptied the overhead bin "flew from row 26 to the lavatory behind the cockpit, and was dead." > "We don't joke about security," says Fabienne Regilt, member of the lufthansa team.
Now you have to play with the airport itself. Most wouldn't have enough bridges to lend two per gate.
This is definitely not usual.
Admittedly, I haven't been to all airports across the US or Europe, but I have been to quite a few, and have yet to see people boarding from the front and back. Closest perhaps was a double bridge used on an Emirates A380.
Last time I flew to Berlin with EasyJet it also boarded from both doors, now that I'm listing it I can only remember a flight from Oslo-Stockholm with Norwegian where the boarding was done only through the front door. Most of the flights I've taken the past 2 years have boarded from both entrances, I feel it's quite usual.
In the US, I would say that it is not usual at all, or I have been to the wrong airports (IAD, DFW, AUS, IAH, SFO, LAX, JFK, LGA, CLT, ORD). I haven't seen this either in Asia.
Perhaps this is highly airport dependent? Still, I would think that this is far from common.
I'm very surprised that so many people are telling me this is uncommon, I've been through this setup countless times.
I used to fly much, much more but I do not remember that far in the past.
Loading and unloading from both ends is a lot faster though. United actually had a double ended gate that they were trying out years ago in Denver, which is the best of both worlds and saves a ton of time loading and unloading. It's this really long cantilever thing over the wing to reach the rear entrance. Unfortunately something broke on it one time and the jet bridge fell onto the wing, damaging the airplane, and they gave up on it.
As others have pointed out, this method works great in many other countries.
This is proven out already in other countries, the ones that want to leave through the jetway stay seated and still get out faster because even if they are near the back most people around them leave through the rear so they make it out the forward jetway much quicker.
Some airports will revert to passenger stairways when there's more planes to put passengers on, and the weather permits. Airports that often do that, may also sometimes use passenger stairways to accelerate deboarding, but passengers aren't very good at doing that; and when overhead bin storage is tight, you may have placed your items in a bin too far forward to retrieve it while passenger motion is towards aft stairs. I can't recall seeing boarding from the front and aft simultaneously.
Very very occasionally, I've seen or heard of airports set up to attach multiple jetbridges to a single aircraft, but that's going to be pretty complex geometry because distance between the front door and the aft door on different planes varies widely.