Hi guys,
I am doing a project on boarding times impact on airlines and it would be amazing if you could suggest possible ways to decrease it.
Here is a nice article from NYtimes
Thank you!
Interesting article, thanks for sharing.
Here are some theories I have developed, maybe you can find something useful in them.
Factors which hinder the boarding process:
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Assigned seating
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Baggage fees (directly effects overhead bin space availability, causing delays)
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Priority boarding, or boarding “Tiers” (First class, elite, etc.)
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Less isles and/or less boarding doors/gates
There are more factors, however these are some of the biggest. If you are able to mitigate these factors you decrease boarding time, reducing turnaround time and increasing the useful time of the aircraft which as you likely know, improves profit. As your article has shown, airlines already mitigate these factors. Southwest for example uses no assigned seating and limited boarding priorities. There are some factors which are more difficult to mitigate and there are numerous methods to both decreasing boarding time. A few of which are as follows.
Increasing boarding efficiency: Within the constructs of an existing timeframe you can take a given amount of passengers and reduce the time by optimizing the process. Under the most ideal situations, you would have people flowing into the aircraft from all available doors, carrying no luggage, and have them seat in the most ideal seat location based on their order of entry. The reasons this can not be accomplished is largely economical. More details further on.
You mentioned you were doing a project on “boarding times” so I will not bother with details on how airlines can optimize the frame at which they can actually begin boarding. Just ask if you need more on the subject.
In order to decrease boarding time you have to recognize the “bottleneck” or the slowest point along your process. For example. the gate agent scanning tickets for entry can do so at a very high rate, say 24 people per min or 1pax per 2.5 seconds (24pax/min). After entering the jetway the next hurdle a pax will encounter is immediately upon entering the plane. The rate at which pax actually sit down in their seat is generally much lower, in this example say 12pax/min. This is exactly why you most often see lines while on the jet bridge. The task now is to improve the rate at which PAX can seat themselves.
One method not outlined in your linked article was the option of using multiple entry points to the cabin. Alaska Airlines has just such a method on their Dash-8 Q400 aircraft (formerly branded as Horizon). Alaska knows they can board 24/pax per minute at the gate but only 12pax/min can actually be seated. To bypass this issue they decided to double the rate at which pax can find seats by allowing boarding through both the front of the aircraft and the rear simultaneously (now potentially 24pax/min, matching the rate of the gate agent). In order to optimize this method Alaska also adjusts their boarding process slightly. Alaska Q400 aircraft have twenty rows, so they tell the pax to use the front entrance of the aircraft if seated in rows 1 through 10 and to use the rear entrance if seated in rows 11 through 20. All in all a very efficient process, but that isn’t the end.
Alaska also knows one of the biggest delays when a customer enters the cabin is to get their carry on baggage into the overhead bins. In order to prevent this they have a baggage “a la carte” system (which is free). After walking out to the aircraft you simply place your carry on baggage on a literal cart, the handlers will tag it with the appropriate color and you can continue onto the aircraft with any small items you need for the flight (lap-tops, pursers, etc). The vast majority of the remaining items passengers now carry onto the airplane are items they will need during the flight, and can be stored under the seats. The brilliance of this system is actually in its disadvantage.
The down side to the a la carte system for the passenger is that after the aircraft lands and you deplane, you wait outside the aircraft in a designated area (still on the ramp) until the baggage handlers can load up the cart and roll it over for passengers to reclaim their bags as they see fit. This effectively shifts the delay from boarding, to deplaning where the delay has less of a negative impact, especially since passengers are waiting outside the aircraft.
Another, very subtle advantage is the location of the baggage processing. As passengers approach the baggage cart any passenger who has to remove something from his or her bag, or is just generally being slow, can be bypassed by any faster passenger who can simply place their bag on the cart and walk onto the aircraft (no isle to constrict their movement). If there was no baggage cart, and the passenger was using overhead bin space, they would have to stop in the isle, load or unload items if necessary and then lift the bag into the overhead bin, which may or may not have space near their seat. This would stop any faster passenger behind them slowing the boarding process.
I think i’ve gone on long enough, I could probably type several more pages. Let me know if this helps and I can try to provide more information.
There is a way to dramatically reduce boarding time, just get the passengers to line up in row order before they go through the boarding gates. Various experts have come up with mainly computer based systems to board passengers in the best sequence but they require much regimentation.
The same result can be achieved in a much more user-friendly way by a patented system called the Flying Carpet. It's quite simple, just the seating plan of the plane drawn to scale, printed on the floor of the departure lounge. Passengers can arrange themselves, quickly and easily just before they board, as can be seen on http://the-flying-carpet.com/
A major feature is that it virtually eliminates the perennial problem of slow-coaches causing bottlenecks in the aisle - with everyone entering the plane in seat row order no-one has to get past anyone else. Consequently boarding time can be reduced by several minutes.
... a much more user-friendly way by a patented system called the Flying Carpet.
Hi,
stand and wait on a printed seating plan is perhaps airline-friendly. But in what universe would you call any sort of waiting in line passenger-friendly ?
Boarding times have gradually increased over the past 20 years. There are several reasons, and all of them are airline-friendly rather than passenger-friendly. I am sure reversing these trends/measures would decrease boarding time ;-)
Jan