The way we board airplanes | Hacker News Reader

The way we board airplanes

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89 pointssethbannon106 comments

You can't control how the airline orchestrates boarding, but you can control how you board. It's much less stressful to stay seated in the lounge while everyone waits in line, then jump up at the end.

I understand the impulse to get on the plane, but it's irrational if you aren't using the overhead bins. (As a rule, I do not. I always check my bag plane-side.) Getting on the plane earlier won't get you to your destination faster. So, don't stress about it, sit down and relax.

Although, my attitude could end up screwing up these optimized methods. But I don't think it hurts in the back-of-the-plane-first method.

I do the same thing, and it is much less stressful. It doesn't make the process any faster though.

I usually do this, but a couple of times I have been told that I have to gate check my carryon because of it.

Still worth it to wait in the lounge and use the wifi instead of cramming into a tiny seat early.

Same here. Def. the way to go.

It's hard to wait long enough though. They start with "final, final, final boarding calls" prematurely and you still end up waiting in line for 5-10 minutes in the gateway even if you're the very last person to check in. I'd still prefer to stand for a few minutes than spend extra time crammed into that awful seat.

On the flip side, since I always travel pretty light, I never check baggage (and I still have the smallest carry-ons...) and a little more stress at the beginning of the flight to ensure I get overhead bin space, means that at the end of the flight I can leave the plane and walk out the front door, rather than waiting 10-20 for the baggage to show up.

If I need to bring enough stuff to require check baggage however, I am always the last to board the plane.

I'm talking about checking my bags plane-side, where you hand it to them when you walk on the plane, and you wait about 5 minutes in the walkway to get your bag. This is different than having to go to the baggage carrousel.

ahh, that I've never tried.

Do they do that on larger jets? I thought valet check was only for smaller regional planes (2-2 and 1-2 configurations) where overhead bins don't even fit rollaboards.

This works for smaller jets. Every larger plane I've flown, bags left gate-side due to full overhead space get checked into the baggage hold and are picked up at baggage claim at your final destination.

This is how I do it for assigned seats when I have no overhead bag, but it sucks for Southwest - You will get stuck in the middle of the worst two people to sit next to. You also can't sit with other people.

Also, many people don't want to check their bags because most airlines now charge $15-25 to do so. Also, when I don't check bags, I don't have to wait in line for the baggage check at my departure, and I don't have to wait at the baggage claim when I arrive. For the short flights I take most often, this extra time can be almost as long as the flight itself.

If you are forced to check your bag on the skybridge, you won't be charged for it.

You will if it's bigger than the alliwed hand baggage size. It'll depend on the boarding team and how strict they are though. If it fits the box at the boarding gate and there is not enough place fir bags at the racks, if you are boarding last it's probable that they ask you to check it, in this situation they won't charge you.

Companies have different policies about baggage, and even inthe same trip you may have problems if a leg is operated by a low cost. Even if the ticket was bought through the main carrier.

I take planes more than 15 days a month and I've seen all this happen.

| You will if it's bigger than the alliwed hand baggage size.

Sure, but that's your own fault and nothing to complain about.

I like to get on early if I'm not already super comfortable. A: Get comfy, get drinks, and get to sleep or into a book. B: Turn off all the TVs in vision since half the people don't actually watch and won't figure out how to turn them on.

Also I've found that a lot of people have an affinity for taking the better seats (last row of front cabin on a lot of United's fleet has space under the seat in addition to in front). While you can let them know and ask them to move, it makes you feel a bit like a jerk, especially if they switched seats to sit next to a companion. Or if they got "confused" and took the other side to avoid the sun and then say "oh I'm sorry, do you mind taking mine or shall I move my stuff over to the other side of the cabin"?

This doesn't seem to happen in proper First cabins.

Whenever I fly, the TVs auto on to show ads, sadetyt video, and more ads. The only solution I found is to physically destroy the offending devices.

Or press "brightness -" until they turn off...

I tried. They disable the control functionality for the first set of ads. I press brightness until screen is off as soon as I sit down. Screen comes on for the ads and the safety video. Screen goes back to off for the rest of the flight. Happened this week on a United on a 737.

>physically destroy the offending devices.

That would probably not go over super well with the various airport police organizations.

I also do this. I'm going to be sitting on the plane for the next several hours, why would I want to get on first?

It's funny that these models all assume you have to seat first class first. Even if I'm flying first class, I still prefer to get on the plane last. The way people board airplanes seems to be the most irrational of all consumer behavior.

"I understand the impulse to get on the plane, but it's irrational if you aren't using the overhead bins."

I disagree. Continually paying attention for an important prompt is stressful and distracting. I'd much rather be waiting on stuff I can't miss.

The same with going out of the plane. There is no reason to join the crowd in the middle, especially if you checked your bags. The sooner you leave the plane, the longer you will wait on airport for bags.

There's a really good reason to get up from one's seat as soon as possible, even when that means waiting longer for bags, or just standing in the aisle. The reason is that sitting in a confined space for a long time with little movement is rather uncomfortable for many passengers, especially those with back problems. Standing up alleviates these symptoms and is a worthwhile tradeoff.

I always get a window seat, then board asap, put in my headphones, and go to sleep.

We once did a transposed Steffen on a high school marching band trip. Crew said they'd never seen a plane fill that quickly. Unfortunately, this is harder to coordinate when the passengers aren't all members of an organization that practices standing in lines.

I think this is really the biggest obstacle to any of these 'superior' methods; getting everyone to do it. For one thing, not everyone is ready to board when you first start boarding. People will show up at different times, after their own group was supposed to board. People won't line up in the right order, no matter how hard you try to enforce it.

A very interesting question is how each of these methods degrades as more people get further out of place.

One factor that has to be taken into account is the "social" one, i.e. how can we enforce that the ultra-fast amazingly optimal sitting scheme will be used.

Let's conduct a thought experiment. My grandma (that has difficulty hearing) is boarding a plane. Try explaining to her, in a sensible and efficient manner that only the people at the windows should get in first.

Ok, maybe my grandma is an extreme example. But think of a first time flyer. Lots of people would be confused.

Also, as already stated, people that travel together sit side by side. Are you going to split the young couple of newly weds during boarding? Is that really sensible? Or the mother and her five kids?

The main takeaway that I get is that you should let people get in without any pre-ordering. Unless you can devise a socially acceptable way to enforce outside-in boarding, that is. I'm not.

You see, the bottom line for me is that simulations are really valuable, but not taking into account the human factors involving the business, how the people actually consume your product, you can have great ideas that work on excel and flunk marvelously on the market.

"Now boarding people requiring special assistance or those with priority seating"

"now boarding seats A and F."

"now boarding seats B and E"...

Seems simple enough. Priority seating would just be a box that you check off, only available to people travelling in groups. Seat these people as far back and as close to a wall as possible.

Sounds simple, but I have yet to be on a flight where nobody misses the guidelines. There are always quite a few people "lost" and most of the time intentionally.

Even if we just start with the assumption that n% of people will misunderstand, it still strikes me as unlikely that the best algorithm will be the current one.

I think we have the next round of tests though. See how many people you need to randomly swap before Steffen is worse than back-to-front.

Also stand-by passengers and people who catch an earlier flight. It used to be that at least one airline (United?) would let you switch planes for free if you asked the gate attendant <10 minutes before door closing and they still had room, so you'd often end up with a few savvy travelers loitering around until the very end of boarding. This hasn't worked the last couple times I tried it - they charge a fee - but I still almost always ask and see what the options are if I get to the airport a couple hours before my scheduled flight and have only carry-on baggage. Once I even managed to switch a 1-stop to an earlier direct flight: I paid the $50 fee but it still ended up cheaper than buying the direct ticket up-front.

The article actually addresses some of the cases you mentioned - like families and couples - and proposes exceptions for those. You could conceivably implement a check-in time boarding order assignment algorithm which takes such factors into consideration. This would result in a slightly longer than ideal boarding time, due to congestion in the aisles, but still better than the current scenarios.

I've been on a few airlines that make people line up in roughly some order according to a number on a boarding pass. I'm sure a couple people are out of order on every flight, but if the airline is already going through the effort of lining people up in some order, why not make it the best order?

You dont say people with window seats board first. Based on the seat passengers have a zone number on their boarding pass, and you call by zones.

Easy. Print icons/ideograms on tickets, in addition and preferably next to ticket numbers.

Print triangles for window seats, squares for middle seats, circles for aisle seats.

Print arrow up for modulo 4 numbered seats, arrow right for non-modulo 4 even numbered seats, arrow down for modulo 3 numbered seats, and arrow left for non-modulo 3 odd numbered seats.

Everyone gets two and only two easily identified symbols in addiion to their ticket number, which suffice for all of the methods outlined in the article.

I always have to laugh when, at the end of a flight, the majority of passengers jump up and elbow their way into the aisle, even though in many cases they'll be standing there for at least 5 minutes.

While sitting in the aisle seat, I've had passengers that were sitting beside me fall into my lap as they try to jostle their way by, just to get a place in the (stationary) line.

What's even funnier is when you see these people waiting around the baggage claim 10 minutes later.

Crowd psychology is a funny thing.

I elbow my way into the aisle because, like anyone over 6 feet, I don't fit comfortably into an airline seat and would dearly like to stand up. I would also like people to figure out how to get their bags out of the overhead and find their children before the aisle in front of them is clear, but I'll settle for being able to stretch.

As a fellow 6'+ person, one of the main reasons I stay seated is so that I don't have to stoop below the overhead bins and/or subject my face to the flurry of arms. :p

I thought I'd found the solution to the height + plane drama. I took a load of sleeping pills. Every time I woke up I took more. It got me from NZ to Europe feeling great, until the last 30 mins of the 30ish hour saga. I'd fallen asleep with crossed legs and my upper leg had cut return circulation off (I assume) and had gone red, swollen and painful. Somehow I limped off the plane. I think the strategy is great but DVT stockings are needed to prevent something like death occurring.

I note that men over 6' like to talk about it.

When I was a teenager we did "experiments" during boarding of busses and in other similar situations. We made people jostle even more by standing in the back and saying, in a stage whisper, things like "Hey, there are still free seats!". It worked, sometimes even too well.

Yeah, we were assholes :-)

>Crowd psychology is a funny thing.

Totally! In domestic flights in India as soon as plane taxis to gate just about every passenger stands up. The isle gets filled and still everyone continues to stand knowing fully well that it will be 10-15 minutes before you can get off the plane. I've never really understood the reason behind this!

For me it depends on whether the couple minutes I save getting an earlier place in that line is going to make any difference. If I have a tight transfer to make in an unfamiliar airport, I'm standing and have my things and have moved up a few rows before the aisles get crowded. If I'm going to be waiting for baggage, you're damned right I'm staying seated, both for my benefit and anyone like me in the other case.

The simplest way to avoid standing in line is to be fashionably late. You sit and read a book until everyone else has boarded, and only then do you go through.

I'm always surprised how everyone rushes to stand in line the moment boarding starts. Rationally speaking they should wait until the last reasonable moment to board, because the seat in the terminal is more comfortable than the one in the airplane.

This works great when you have checked luggage, or if you use a non roll aboard bag, which I’ve moved to doing. Otherwise, it’s a race to get available overhead space - in part because of increased checked bag fees, and airlines not enforcing proper sized carry-ons.

The downside of this strategy is that you're often forced to check your carry on bag(s) if it's a full flight and all the overhead bins are full.

I think this is due to the diminishing supply of overhead storage space, and the goal of not checking or being far from your stuff.

Though, as others have pointed out, carry-ons can put a damper on the idea, I tend to do this. Even before carry-ons became a consideration, I've been mystified by people that want to get on the plane first. Umm, more time in the aluminum tube in an uncomfortable seat? No thanks, I'll wait. I understand that it may not work for everyone, but I typically check everything but a laptop bag, and get on as late as I can. Grab a latte after getting off the plane, and stand by the luggage output for 15 minutes while sipping my delicious (okay, it's the airport: barely palatable) coffee beverage.

Even today when you get booked flights with no carry-on room, the gate agent comes on the PA: "if you check your carry-on, we'll let you board first!" If I check my bag and don't have a carry-on anymore, and I have an assigned seat, how about I board dead last instead? Because I personally don't view being first on the plane as a reward.

You've never been bumped off a flight?

Never that I can recall. Common problem for others?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'd rather be on the plane because I know I'm not going to miss it, so I can actually focus on my book. And I say this as someone who's 6'5"...

If you only have one bag that fits under the seat. That would be the best policy. Otherwise, getting there earlier to avoid the people that refuse to pay for a checked bag is better. [Overhead space is quickly taken]

Better even: I once waited by mistake until the departure time instead of the boarding time. They search for your case in the checked luggage to expell it. If you arrive before they found your case, you're allowed to take the flight.

Hint: Don't do that.

I do this as well, at least when flying economy, because I want to spend as little time in that plane seat as possible. Overhead bin space has rarely been a problem, so I take that risk. Maybe I've been lucky or maybe it's because my carryon is fairly small and soft (squashable!)

This had been known for a while. Yet there are different considerations besides fastest boarding time. First, people traveling together tend to sit next to each other, so ordering by "columns" instead of rows breaks them apart in the queue which may be either uncomfortable or downright infuriating if you travel with young kids.

I can imagine that letting passengers take their seats at random results in pretty fragmented available seating so if you travel as a large group and want to seat together, this might be a problem too.

I think you could still do columns -- just allow people to go out of order if they are going with someone that's going in order.

> First, people traveling together tend to sit next to each other, so ordering by "columns" instead of rows breaks them apart in the queue

You can order by column but still let families together, for example with United you can board with your group/family's lowest group number. This means a 1K with boarding group 1 can bring in his wife and kid (who are somewhere between 3 and 5 if they don't have status) on the plane all at the same time. This way you can fill up whole rows at once.

Every airplane I've ever been on has boarded front to back (which I've always found non-sensical), but the article says most board back to front. Am I going crazy, or are Delta, US Airways, and American Airlines not in that "most US airlines"?

I has the same experience when flying US Airways. Seeing this I just thought someone was extra incompetent, but reading the last sentence of the article it starts making sense - they want it to be inefficient so people pay extra.

They don't. They want to get the plane loaded and out of the way. The quicker they get the plane loaded and fully ready to go the quicker the FAs get paided. Less "wasted time."

Quick boarding: This is a perk for those who fly quite a bit. [You can't make silver status, butt on the seat method, by just flying on 4 domestic flights a year]

In general, you are seeing the premium customers board first, who have seats in front.

It's a recent trend to board front-to-back. This way, the first class cabin/priority sections get first dibs on the overhead bins while the people in the cheap sets get play Tetris meets Sword of Damocles.

Nothing to add but the Tetris meets Sword of Damocles made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that.

Almost all of my flying experience is on American, so I'm not sure how much this applies to the others, but I think all US majors technically board back to front. The problem is that there are so many ways so "cut" in line that (at least according to some airline industry friends of mine) it's fairly common for about 50% of the plane to board out of order. Off the top of my head, you can board earlier on AA if you:

- fly on the airline a lot/have some sort of frequent flyer status - are in a premium cabin - have the AA credit card - pay $10 extra at checkin - are in the military - have a seat on a row with a bulkhead in front of it - are on an exit row - have children flying with you

.. and, of course, I'm sure that list isn't exhaustive. By the time you factor all that in, I usually think it looks like boarding happens in a completely random order.

Can depend on the aircraft. For smaller planes, they have weight & balance restrictions, so they'll have people board front-to-back, so the plane doesn't flip backwards.

From my experience, the boarding problem is pretty specific to the US, where everyone seems to have carry on bags perfectly sized to fit the overhead compartments, of which there are not enough to satisfy everyone's need to not check in any baggage (and thus avoid check in charges)

In my opinion the solution would probably be to discourage as much bulk in carry on, rather than herding cats at the gate.

Completely agree. It makes no sense to me that you have to pay to check your luggage, while carry-ons are free. It definitely should be the other way around.

Each checked item costs the airline: moving them around requires labour and equipment, and there are further expenses dealing with the inevitable proportion of lost, stolen, delayed or damaged bags. It probably shouldn't be surprising that they seek to pass that on.

Sounds nice in theory, but it totally breaks down with airlines' policies of charging for checked luggage. Getting onboard first guarantees you a coveted overhead bin spot, aisle clogging be damned.

Do any airlines charge to check luggage once the overhead bins are full? I'm generally too lazy to board in the proper order, and I always get my would-have-been-a-carry-on checked for free.

I take pleasure in the way this works out:

1. The airline tries to nickel-and-dime customers by charging for checked bags.

2. Their customers respond by carrying on bags.

3. The airline lacks capacity for the carry-ons

4. The customers end up with a freebie: Free checked bags at the gate (instead of waiting in line in the lobby).

I'm sure it could be improved further by a re-design of aircrafts. We could board a capsule beforehand or make the entire aircraft with falcon-walls. But the Steffen method sounds pretty good to :)

I'm not sure a redesign of aircraft is necessary - simply allowing both back to front and front to back entry should make boarding times much faster. It will require that airports are redesigned to support this though.

I wonder if you could build a passenger pod which attaches to the airframe. The pods get swapped when the plane comes in to the terminal. The new pod would already be fully boarded, and deplaning people on the arriving pod would not hold everything up.

I guess whether this would be worth it or not depends on whether the advantages of "0 boarding time" from the airline's point of view offset the cost of the infrastructure and extra weight required to support such a system.

From a security point of view, you could keep the pod completely decoupled from the other parts of the aircraft (e.g. no cabin access, not "coupled into" control systems).

That sounds incredibly crash-prone. I prefer to fly in one-piece airplanes.

Boarding time isn't a bottleneck ergo it's not a problem.

The real time suck when a plane is grounded is emptying the latrine, loading the water, refueling, doing engine checks.

The lack of major airlines and the high entry costs in the space mean that it's unlikely you'll lose travelers over user experience.

RyanAir is a prime example of this....just imho though.

Exactly, there is no incentive or profit for the airlines to speed the boarding process. In fact, it takes a fixed amount of time to turn around a plane so if you can make it seem like it is the passengers fault and not their, all the better. It might even be that it is to the benefit of the airlines for it to take longer.

The article ends by saying that most airlines don't do the optimal methods of boarding in order to encourage people to upgrade to priority/early boarding, and that it makes them more money that way.

Wouldn't it make the airlines even more money to optimize boarding, which would enhance customer experience, which would increase the likelihood of them flying with you on future flights?

I'm sure some accountant somewhere has numbers that say otherwise but it's difficult to accurately measure how that small of a chance could increase brand loyalty (a major factor in Southwest's success). In my opinion, other airlines should reconsider the decision to leave boarding unoptimized.

Is that the wrong way to think about business decisions or should you always trust the predicted numbers no matter what?

Probably not, I have a feeling 9/10 people just buy the cheapest tickets regardless of the airline. The other 10% go with Virgin or something with fun branding.

Customer satisfaction is already in the negatives, they're being wise and playing their strong points: upgrades.

Not only that, but if you board faster you can leave faster. Less time on the ground = more hours flying = more money.

Most passengers choose by price only and the rest have frequent flyer status and board first anyways.

This should take into consideration the time to organize the people before they enter the plane. I may have missed it, but I didn't see the research cover that. I bet the "most efficient" method pointed is one of the less efficient methods to organize people outside.

Imagine trying to implement the Steffen proposal. Everyone has to be in exactly the right position in line for their seat. You'd essentially need to number the seats in the preflight lounge and loosely enforce seat numbers at that point.

I imagine this could also get very confusing when a number of passengers show up at the last minute.

In Europe this doesn't happen (in my limited experience). People board in random order in which they lined up towards the gate or get off the airport bus.

I think this is because americans can't ever let anybody loiter so they just have to push people into some order, even inferior one.

I'm a frequent flyer, mostly within Europe, and this is true. The exception is boarding a bigger plane like the 747. But iirc the ordering is then more coarse grained (based on aisles instead of seats).

And I guess I'm not the only European who immediately thinks of low fares, blue and yellow plastic, non-reclining seats and lottery ticket sales, when reading about that damned random method.

At least they've finally switched to preassigned seating a la Easy jet though. Alleluia, it's so much more relaxing!

The article doesn't capture the fact that half of the time the boarding delay is caused by people looking for available space in the overhead bins. Even in the best workflow he demonstrated, there will still be people going back and forth to find a bin.

I'm not seeing any Group 1 passengers arriving late and having to board with Group 3 or 4 and that happens on pretty much every flight I've been on.

Maybe we're simulating a delayed flight then?

But if the flight's already delayed, who even cares anymore.

That Steffen method looks much more theoretical than the other ones. The problem is you will have to line everyone perfectly at the boarding gate, and I believe this is pretty much impossible (everyone wants to get in first, they're barely ok with letting other people go in front of them because even if it's faster on the whole, it's slower for that person, which is all that matters). The outside-in should be implementable, but people who travel together want to stay together, so it's going against them.

Back-to-front still seems like the easiest method for an un-ordered, mildly-cooperative group of agents.

"those who pay extra are sitting on planes longer than necessary"

Only if the passengers boarding is the thing that takes the longest (as opposed to refueling, inspections, loading luggage, getting clearance). This may very well be the case some or even all the time, but I don't know that it is.

What's interesting to me (as a very frequent traveller) is that I have routinely seen completely full 747-size planes board in 10-15 minutes in Japan. This has much to do with the culture I suspect, plus smaller size humans, and less tendancy to take bigger bags. Still, it's impressive.

> These methods are all unquestionably faster than the standard method, so would speed up the turnaround times, theoretically saving airlines money.

That's assuming boarding is the bottleneck in the turnaround process. Is it?

Although the boarding time is improved, there is overhead in the sorting algorithms. Try to run a bubble sort on a family and see how that goes.

The time gained in the speed of sitting is lost in the sorting.

The boarding time for an A380 is 45min to 1hr before departure. When you count how much money is being spent, they probably wouldn't mind printing sequence numbers on the boarding pass.

The article doesn't state how much time would be saved for a big plane, though.

Easyjet is also quite efficient. You have 2 enterances (front and back). You are designated to a specific enterance (based on your seat number). This already reduces the problem.

I once had a colleague with the following idea:print the seat numbers and assign them as people queue to board the plane. In practise this would fill the plane from back to front

Unfortunately the front seats are usually mist desirable. That system would incentivise people to the back of the queue - nobody would stand up first!

Might be possible to undo this effect by filling up front-to-back - but that creates other practical problems.

That requires that you have no assigned seating, which means passengers can't select a preferred seat (whether window/aisle or just "not that seat in front of the exit row that doesn't recline").

It's all about the baggage policy, not the boarding policy.

They just need to get rid of the overhead luggage compartments. Unchecked luggage is the entire boarding problem. It is also what holds up the security lines.

Make checking luggage much faster/easier and at the destination get it out for pick up much faster than is done now. Dramatically shrink or remove the overhead bins. Boarding and security line problems solved.

They would also have to stop charging for checked bags.

No matter how efficient they get at checking bags, though, not having to do it will always be faster.

I don't really see how much faster they can get in terms of unloading the bags... you will still have to wait for all the bags to come out on the conveyer belt, and whoever gets the last bag will have to wait quite a bit.

This.

This is what causes at least 50% of queues. Everyone can take 1 small bag. Nothing on wheels. If you can't lift it above your head it's too heavy. No exceptions. Overhead bins will be sufficient, no hunting around for a space, easier to get your bag at the end of a journey.

On the other hand; I have taken a 35 liter backpack on many trips. No waiting at the carousel to get my suitcase; just walk straight out of the airport.

There was a Mythbusters episode a while back testing different boarding methods. If I recall correctly, having a "free-for-all" seating arrangement was the fastest, although it received the lowest customer satisfaction score from customers. The most satisfactory method of boarding was "WILMA[1] with blocks" which involves having business board first, followed by a combination of back-to-front and WILMA boarding while each zone was boarded with the WILMA method, starting from the back.

[1] Stands for "windows-middles-aisles". See http://take.ms/znON7 for a definition.

This information is already in the article.

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