A Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use (2019)
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It's a bit interesting to just sit there at the gate and watch people rush to get into the line as fast as possible. The plane leaves at the same time for everyone anyway. Crowd behaviour is a very strange and paradoxical thing sometimes.
The only things I will not ever check are my camera gear, and I'll fight to avoid a gate check too (I've only had one occasion where I've been pressed to do so, and I just told the agent that what was in the case exceeded their checked bag insurance, and she told me to take it with me. I've also heard anecdotes about photographers carrying $50 or $100 and if being 'required' to gate check, turning to people behind them and saying "this is for you if you'll gate check so I don't have to" - no idea how that's worked out for them).
Until I’m on the plane, I have to live in the world of the airport, where things can and do go wrong. Once I’m on the plane, I can go back to my own world.
Personally I can focus on my book better if I'm boarded and don't have to monitor announcements.
I'm rushing on for the same reasons you hang around and that's to help the boarding process.
And I'd rather wait for it on the plane than at the gate. Once I'm on the plane that's it for X hours, can relax more, nothing I need to do for a while.
You realise they sell (or it's a perk of travel class / reward system / etc.) priority boarding right? Some people do value boarding early, they're not confused and think the plane is going to move sooner.
Southwest does a pretty good job of this extraction of money for plausibly better access with early bird, A-list, and related things.
The flight attendants then are relied upon to get people on and off the plane quickly.
The fire department recently acknowledged they will not be responding to calls to 4-5 man lift huge individuals unable to get into or out of their seat(s!) as too many have been injured. This has led to multiple delays as it is not in many people’s job description to perform. On the job injury coverage will not cover it.
On planes? I've never seen or heard of this.
In general? As a firefighter, one, it absolutely is in our "job description" as such. It's literally categorized as a lift assist call by our County Dispatch/911, and while it is prioritized as a 'yellow' call (low/er), it is also not an "optional" response (which some smoke investigations or burn ban violations are), and lift injuries absolutely are covered by our workplace insurance, and are some of the most common.
You need a more scattered order for good performance.
I don't recall like that, but there are also double decker jet bridges to board both levels of the A380 at once.
It'd just be a matter of assigning A1 to the person in the back row window seat on the left, A2 to the person two rows in front of that on the left, etc., as demonstrated in the video.
Families with young kids could queue up together, because they're (probably) going to be sitting together in one row anyway, and they would have a row's buffer on either side of them while the parents are trying to help the kids get situated.
The landing wait is annoying but boarding is practically a non-issue.
until you "board first" with a budget airline at an airport that makes you stand just outside the gate in a common (loses queue) and un-airconditioned space until they're ready to actually board. Then paying for boarding first is an absolute privilege, especially when the riffraff can run to the plane first anyway.
I mean it all sounds fun but when you consider for example low-cost airlines in Europe (WizzAir, Ryanair) they’re really efficient without any of this, since their margins depend on it. Surprisingly their boarding isn’t as structured (only priority and then the rest) and they still only take around 30 mins total from first to last passengers being let through a gate in my experience. Their trick is probably some combination of motivated passengers, asking people to put stuff under the seat in from, remote stands that need a bus and flight attendants constantly announcing „please don’t block the aisle”.
This also explains why many airlines do the boarding group thing: because it rewards the frequent flyers with access to overhead bin space!
That's the reason that people want to board first!
So why not just charge for overhead bin space? Because it's unseemly and -anyways- hard to get right.
It worked great except that the bag-check process was absolutely terrible: every passenger had to go to the desk outside security. But other airlines have solved that issue (separate check-in and self-service-tag-printing+bag-drop-only queues make a big difference).
What's surprising about that? That's how you do quick boarding. Southwest has always done it that way. They start boarding 30 minutes before departure. And stop 10 minutes before.
What the long boarding line accomplishes is that it forces people to wait in a long line, which you can charge them to skip. Think of it as a mobile game with microtransactions, but for airplanes.
If everyone has priority, no one has priority.
Compare to the Shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan which loads 3x the number of people in 2-3 minutes
It’s a fun thought experiment but it’s just one of those things where it seems there’s no ‘good’ solution that actually works in reality, but the less you try to organise it, the closer to a ‘least-worst’ situation you get…
After several such experiences you fall back to the least common denominator: block everyone until you stuff your 7 handbags occupying 3 compartments and fuck the next people in line.