Over at Wired is a story on determining the optimal way to board a plane.
Jason Steffen is an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, and several years ago he modeled different airline boarding methods to see what made them so slow. He also figured out how airlines could get us on board much faster.
Jason Steffen has a page with more detail on the algorithm.
(Spotted via Scientific American's physics week in review, where it is noted this work is actually a few years old — having previously been covered in 2008 and 2011 — before the current Wired article).
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Optimal Order for Boarding a Plane
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(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @07:53PM
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/photos/mythbusters-plane-boarding-pictures.htm [discovery.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:15PM
Having recently suffered the horror that is Glasgow Airport (GLA), I find that the actual boarding process is the last thing that I remember.
What I do recall are the massive cattle barn line-ups for Air Transat check-in; and the equally long cattle barn line ups for shoe x-rays and cosmetic confiscation; and the final one hour delay in boarding during which airline staff never, not once, made any announcement.
By the time we actually were allowed onto the plane I would have been happy with a completely unregulated mosh of people climbing over each other just to escape GLA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @09:26AM
The article itself says the "optimum" method won't work in practice:
The problem with his model, he admits, is that it does not account for human nature. For example, it’s hard to imagine people who are traveling together who would be willing to split up, just to stand in line (especially if that group contains small children). Add that to language barriers, people running late, and the overall difficulty in getting large groups to follow complicated directions, and it’s easy to see why Steffen’s idealized boarding model hasn’t been adopted. “It does require a bit of control over the passengers that I don’t think airlines really have,” he said.
And as you say the main problems and waits tend to be elsewhere. I find the boarding bit actually not that annoying and not that long a wait. What is annoying is the airport "security" bunch telling me that my bottle has _water_ and throwing it away[1]. What was even more annoying was a "security" guy in Bali making me throw my _empty_ water bottle away (I have no idea why, nor did I want to wait in a room with his friends to never find out).
The other one is some (not all) immigration queues are really slow - I've been to one in Thailand where it seems they intentionally make some lines slow so that you're more willing to pay 100 baht for the "express" counter/queue.
[1] If it was really water it's far safer than the many litres of vodka you're allowed to carry in. If it's genuinely dangerous they shouldn't be chucking all those dangerous stuff in the same bin and letting me get away with it.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @04:47PM
Exactly. The TSA goon with his rubber glove up your wazoo is probably the bigger hurdle...
I absolutely loathe air travel.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 10 2014, @06:26PM
By the time we actually were allowed onto the plane I would have been happy with a completely unregulated mosh of people climbing over each other just to escape GLA.
I think Southwest has just found a new expansion market.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:41PM
I think maybe the best way would be that everybody come armed to the teeth and fight it out for the best seats.
(Score: 1) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:53PM
There's a flaw in your logic: there are no good seats.
You either have cattle class where the seat in front is forcibly rammed into your knees, or business class where the seat in front is forcibly rammed into you knees with a complimentary juice and newspaper before takeoff. As for first class, it's like business class, but the trolley dolly closes the curtain after takeoff, to separate your from the other people in lower classes whose knees hurt just as much as yours, but who are less special than you are because they're behind the curtain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:27PM
Well the good might come from the fact that if someone cuts your legs off in the fight, any seat is a good seat, and if you manage to get in the plane with legs cut off, you've done a great job fighting your way in. Silver lining man, silver lining.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 10 2014, @04:21PM
Actually, I have been in a few planes where First Class has more leg room.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by N3Roaster on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:22PM
I had an internal flight in Ethiopia several years ago that was basically this. The seat indication on the ticket doesn't mean anything, everybody gets on at the same time, you sit wherever there's space. It seemed to work pretty well.
Typica - Free software for coffee roasting professionals. [typica.us]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:46PM
Because of the many people who insist on bringing massive suitcases as carry-ons, there's no space left in the overhead bins by the time half the passengers have boarded. As a result, most people hurry in front of the line as if their lives depended on it, jumping the zones, for a chance to find space for their own stuff. Combine this with the attendants who need to stow excess luggage that won't fit anywhere either in front or at the rear of the plane, and you have a mess anyway, regardless of the initial boarding order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:29PM
Some airlines deal with this well. The gate agent enforces the size restriction and counts the number of bags going on board (some airlines "boarding zones" are actually just codes for how likely you are to have a carry-on: if you checked no luggage, you're probably carrying a bag; airlines that charge for carry-ons exist and do use the boarding codes to organize luggage). A good gate agent will know when to offer "valet" service or "gate check" for bags.
Gate checking in the US is a fucking dream come true for me: I'll ask before boarding starts if they need to gate-check anything, because I'd love to have my luggage handled for me for free. I've never lost any luggage in the US; Italy and Heathrow (which is basically Hell, but more grossly commercialized), however, lose normally checked luggage all the time. It's just expected that Al Italia will lose your luggage, and British Airways is little better.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:55PM
Airlines will, or already have, come up with a clever way to fix this: Slap a penalty charge for anyone knowingly bringing obviously oversize carry-on, thinking they'll get it gate-checked for free.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Monday November 10 2014, @02:29PM
...or just don't let them bring it on in the first place.
Different planes have different size bins. I just flew on a US Airways E190 that had tiny bins. My daypack sized backpack fit in just fine, but a lot of folks tried stuffing expanded rollers in, and they were bending and warping the bins just to cram their stuff in. The airlines screwed themselves over though, by charging for checked bags. If anything, they should do this:
Carry On:
1 "Personal Item" for free, basically anything that will fit under the seat in front of you
1 Additional Bag, $50
Checked:
1 "carryon sized" bag, up to 35 lbs, free (basically, what you currently put in the overhead compartment)
Additional charges for additional bags, maybe charge the lesser of $1/pound or $1/in on the longer dimension
Get those not-carry-on bags out of the cabin. Boarding speeds up. Plane spends more time in the air. Unless the airlines need the plane on the ground for that duration (re-fueling or other light maintenance at the gate) they'd probably save money by pushing more bags to the cargo hold.
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Monday November 10 2014, @02:18AM
This used to be a big PITA, but the last flight I was on was a "pay for carry-on", and the bins were empty.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:52PM
Why do they wait until about 5-10 minutes before the place takes off (or so it seems from memory)?
Its the classic mistake of optimizing the wrong thing... you want a faster rush hour, you can come up with weird / crazy / complicated algorithms, but the best way to reduce traffic latency is to outright get rid of rush hour. Traffic at 5pm Sunday night is usually not much different than 2pm Sunday afternoon, but its a heck of a lot better than 5pm Monday night.
My guess is something like the cabin crew are paid starting when the first passenger steps on board, so the company has a financial motivation to wait until 5 minutes before takeoff to begin boarding, even if it causes something like a cattle rush, despite the plane just sitting there empty for the last hour and all the passengers looking at it thru the window. We live and work in a centrally controlled economy, it wouldn't be rocket science to have someone in DC change the rules for cabin crew pay, or whatever foolishness. Instead of saving dollars by intentionally creating a cattle rush, we could eliminate the savings by adjusting crew pay rules and create an opposite force by allowing the airline to put minutes the plane is open on the ground as a business loss, creating a financial motivation to open the loading door ASAP rather than last possible minute.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:50PM
The airlines have also done this to themselves by making luggage a scarce commodity by charging for it. The airlines could all collectively solve that by 'free luggage' as a perk again.
They also are not allowed to have *anyone* who is not authorized on the plane unless there is someone there from the airline crew. Many times your crew just came from another plane too. I was once having to transfer planes. It just so happened the plane I was on was going to be the transfer. The crew could not get off the plane until I did. I asked. So I got off sat in the concourse so they could leave for their next plane. Think it is FAA rules.
I think they also do not let anyone on the plane while it is fueling.
It also takes a decent amount of time to vacuum and clean up the seats. Because lets face it most people are slobs. And that is easier if you do not have 20 people trying to come down the isle.
(Score: 1) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:38PM
The airlines could all collectively solve that
Like I wrote, we have a nearly completely centrally controlled economy, all the FAA needs to do is issue regulation number 6.02e23 stating they can't charge for baggage and its all done. It would save a lot of non-profitable Fing around by zillions of people.
Your anecdote about the crew being divorced from their plane is about the same deal. A simple FAA scheduling rule will fix that. I suspect its very difficult to make money by having people walk around from plane to plane between flights. A crew that spends a lot of time with one individual plane will naturally be "better" with their personal plane by some objective and profitable criteria. A little less security theater paranoia would probably help society in general, not just this problem.
You do have a good point about cleaning the plane. Perhaps that's what they're doing while we stand in the concourse while looking out the window at the plane for an hour before they let us board. They could allow people who don't care about cleanliness to board, which is an interesting idea. I agree you can't clean a plane while the aisles are hopelessly jammed for the 5 minutes before takeoff... HOWEVER if they allowed free boarding, the crowded aisles wouldn't exist, so vacuuming around "one dude in the otherwise empty aisle" doesn't sound all that complicated.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:56PM
Like I wrote, we have a nearly completely centrally controlled economy,
This is a stupid statement, and you've obviously never lived in a country with a centrally-controlled economy. The US government does not tell shoe manufacturers how many kind of shoes they're allowed to make, or toilet paper manuafacturers how many rolls of TP they're allowed to produce.
Yes, the government does regulate certain industries to some extent. This is not the same thing as a "centrally-controlled economy".
You are correct about the FAA, though: they absolutely could make a rule forbidding airlines from charging for checked luggage (up to a certain amount probably, or else you'll have some asshole wanting to check 2 tons of "luggage").
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 10 2014, @01:21PM
The .gov gives orders about how, where, who, when they'll make those shoes. You are correct, the one freedom remaining is to not make shoes at all or how many to make (although often in many non-shoe businesses there are quotas of course).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 10 2014, @05:46PM
You sound like a nutcase. No, the government does not give orders about any such thing. Have you ever run a business? I do; the government just makes me pay taxes, and has a few restrictions about what I can't do (like set up a factory in a residential subdivision). I can employ whoever I like and run my business during whatever hours I like (and as a small business owner I keep some pretty late and crazy hours). To equate some restrictions (like not being able to racially discriminate, or not being able to pollute willy-nilly, or having to follow zoning ordinances) with a command economy is inane and idiotic.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:33PM
My thoughts were similar.
This optimizes activity that should be designed out of the equation. I remember an idea that claimed could get people and luggage on a plane in less than 120 seconds.
There is an idea to load a "box" from all sides simultaneously. Meaning, the only real bottleneck is the 3 or 4 people meeting to sit in a single group of seats. Luggage and people are loaded from 3 aisles, or 4 on bigger planes. This works by treating the left and right sides of the boxes as an aisle during boarding. Underneath the upper walkways, the box is fully open for luggage to be loaded the same way. From all directions at the same time.
Once loaded the box secures the sides and is loaded onto the plane. The nose of the plane hinges up similar to large transport planes (think Fedex) and the entire box is slid into the plane in probably less than a minute or two at most. After landing, the box is pulled out and deposited into a terminal where dozens can disembark simultaneously.
Somewhat sure it would be windowless too with large displays showing the sky outside. IIRC, there was even ideas to make it more modular than that similar to self loading passenger cars. Written off as too much of luxury.
If you want to make it as fast as possible, I think you have to look at a design like this.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:46PM
Like a ferry. Load them on a bus, drive the bus into the plane, strap down the bus, all done. Probably not the craziest idea. Would make concourse design strangely simple, more bus depot like. Probably save a lot of time and money and fuel spent driving jetliners around on the ground. Electric bus would have enough range for airfield ops and no fuel issues.
I would like to see them bolt the box shut at customs and they feed in air and electricity and you do what you want. 150 seats stacked like sardines or rows of tables having a LAN party or 50 mattresses and an orgy or who knows and who cares.
(Score: 3, Funny) by edIII on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:34PM
I hereby nominate VLM to be in charge of the airlines.
Seconds?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 10 2014, @12:00AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:02PM
The plane isn't just sitting there. It's being prepared for passengers. Pretty much as soon as it is ready, they start boarding. It simply requires X amount of time to do all the checks, inspections, fixes, fuelling, and cleaning between flights. The planes usually only ever sit idle overnight, and even then not for very long, and some are on overnight flights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @03:30AM
This is very true. It is easy to see and sample too for yourself. Next time you are 'waiting'.
Look outside and see if you see a plane. If its not there that is the reason you are waiting.
If there is no crew on the ground doing anything that is why you are waiting. They are probably understaffed and busy working another plane.
If the flight crew has not show up yet (ran out of hours and have to switch everyone out or they are on a different flight). That is why you are waiting. They have to be there for you to sit on the plane.
If luggage is not being put on the plane that is another reason you can wait.
There are tons of reason you can wait.
Most of the time (at least for me)... First boarding until I am in my seat is usually less than 15 mins. I have waited for hours for a plane to show up from another city. People getting on the plane is usually the smallest part. Door close and push off can take longer if some inspection failed or we are 27 in a line of planes waiting to take off all at the same time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by deimtee on Monday November 10 2014, @02:58AM
Because if they didn't make them wait until just before take-off, you'd have at least 10% of the passengers getting off again to go to the loo.
Or just getting so bored they act like arseholes to the crew, demanding drinks and food.
I know if I worked on a plane I wouldn't want the entitled bastards on there for any longer than absolutely necessary.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hellcat on Monday November 10 2014, @09:27AM
Marketing guy here.
Certain people have a need to feel special, getting rewards for flying an airline. One of the perks is being allowed to board early.
Another general perk is being allowed to choose your seat.
And don't forget people traveling together, like parents and kids.
The model didn't consider those human factors.
Just sayin...
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday November 10 2014, @02:04PM
After having my first kid, I've gained a different perspective on travelling by plane. First, I do it as little as possible (mind you, I didn't like it before either...). Second, I don't board early. I know this means I'm taking a huge chance on having some space left in the overhead bin but honestly fuck it, if I come in and the bin over our seats is filled with some guy's massive suitcase 10 rows behind, I'm gonna ask the attendant to remove it for me. I actually need the space for something useful, not because you want to save 20 minutes upon arrival and tell your buddies that you "travel light and never check in anything". This is where the airlines are making a stupid mistake making people pay for checked in luggage. I'm sure it's a nightmare to try and enforce those size restrictions nowadays as people do not want to pay for the check-ins (here in Canada, Air Canada and WestJet are starting to do just that on local and US bound flights if I'm not mistaken). One funny thing about boarding in early and seating in the front is how many people they manage to stuff in those things. I'm just amazed, every time I think it's done, there is another batch of 10 people coming in. And on, and on... Just unbelievable to me.
Anyway, my point is that the flow described here does not represent the reality of air travel in my opinion but then again, I'm not sure any mathematical formula ever could. Personally I want to board last, not first with my kid. Give him time to run around as much as possible before I lock him in a tin can for hours on trying to get him to stay seated. Once we're on the plane, we don't need 45 minutes to get ready. Take your sippy cup, book, seat down, buckle up and off we go. My kid is a lot better at doing that than adults and their electronic gadgets upon take off and landing or standing up in the aisle for 20 minutes because they want to reach for the iPod they stuffed at the bottom of their bags... Might have to fly with the family around Christmas time, I'm already having cold sweats about it (my personal phobia about flying doesn't really help) ;-). Man, don't you love flying with all those constraints and lovely characters around you ;-) ?
(Score: 1) by mattwrock on Monday November 10 2014, @07:44PM
The whole reason people bring the 50 lbs of junk is because of lost luggage. There was a time where we brought next to nothing on the plane, and all of our stuff flew in the belly of the aircraft with us. Somehow though, our bags disappeared. It has happened to me twice (in about 10 different trips). I have being running with a soft bag that fits into all overhead bins for about 15 years now.
I don't think people travel enough to know that you don't need 10 changes of clothes, your entire medicine cabinet, and bedroom items for a 3 day trip. If we the traveler would travel light, and the airline figure out a way to get our stuff there, the idea of being first to get your bag in "your" area would go away.
Ones and zeros everywhere... I even saw a 2 - Bender