

The Fastest Way to Board a Plane: Randomly? - Shenglong
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904233404576457930970524522.html

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jff
It would help if they'd start being stricter about carry-on luggage, so we
don't have people standing in the aisles desperately trying to cram a 42-inch
rolling bag (the bane of my existence) into a 38-inch overhead compartment (or
however big they are).

I always use a medium-sized duffel bag and a small backpack when going
"carryon-only" for a long flight. The non-rigid bag makes it easier to stow
and remove, making the whole system move a hell of a lot faster. Laptop goes
in backpack for safekeeping.

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pavel_lishin
It would also help if people were smarter about arranging their bags in the
compartments. I can't really think of a way to unambiguously describe what I'm
talking about, so I drew a crappy diagram: <http://i.imgur.com/pILt1.jpg>

Note that a compartment will hold three bags side by side just fine, as long
as you put them in long-way-in. One idiot putting it in horizontally is like
the guy dropping a straight-piece in Tetris on its side - congrats, you just
shafted everyone, and potentially delayed take-off by 10 minutes because now
we have to ferry one bag from the passenger compartment into the baggage one.

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joejohnson
Thank you! I have seen this far too many times and it drives me crazy. Also,
people then get stuffy when you start to rearrange the bags properly so more
can fit in there. Aaaah!

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orangecat
Airlines need to do 2 things to speed up the boarding process:

1\. Charge for more than one carry-on item, and do not charge for checked
baggage.

2\. Get checked baggage off the plane and to passengers in a reasonable amount
of time.

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tesseract
Reducing demand for overhead compartment space would actually seem to
eliminate the entire reason people want to get on the plane as soon as
possible. Apart from needing to jockey for space to store luggage (or, if in
first class, get that first free glass of champagne) I don't understand why
people are in such a hurry to move from a semi-comfortable waiting area to a
completely uncomfortable airplane. The plane is not going to take off any
sooner than scheduled, and in my experience it is pretty rare for a flight to
be delayed due to slow boarding alone.

I actually have a frequent-flyer status that could get me on the plane very
early in the process, but what I usually try to do instead is travel with only
one carry-on bag, book an aisle seat, and wait until most everyone else in my
'zone' (presumably including the others in my row) is on the plane before I
get in line.

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pavel_lishin
Assuming that planes load rear-to-front, aren't you going to be stuck behind
everyone in the zone that is boarding after you - that is, closer to the front
of the plane?

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dav-id
You are also assuming that they are flying in cattle class. To me the whole
point of frequent flier clubs are to spend as little time in the back of the
plane as possible and use your miles to upgrade towards the front.

I totally agree that the best option is to be the last person getting onto the
plane and ideally the first one off. Premium, Business, First class cabins
tempt you on with their pre flight drinks.

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bryanlarsen
They talked about the best option but abandoned it due to a little bit of
confusion:

People without big carry-on items get on first.

I wish they would have stuck with it.

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seles
This and window, middle, aisle ordered boarding have an obvious fault: it will
breakup groups. This will cause confusion and stress, especially for families.

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thestoicjester
_Also, people traveling together won't be assigned to different boarding
groups if their reservations are "linked" in the airline's system._

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bryanlarsen
You're referring to the "boarding group" system American uses. The parent
comment is referring to window-middle-aisle boarding used by United.

~~~
thestoicjester
_"This and..."_

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silencio
> Virgin America, which sells early boarding as part of a perks package to
> customers who buy seats with extra legroom, experimented with giving early
> boarding to passengers who didn't bring large bags on board. That showed
> promise for speeding up boarding, but because it was unfamiliar to
> customers; it slowed down some people and offset gains, a spokeswoman said.

This bothers me to no end. I fly Virgin 1-2x roundtrips a month, and I've seen
this program put into place very erratically. If they wanted to see results,
they should have offered that on all flights for a certain period of time,
instead of only here and there and mentioning it only once after boarding
priority. A lot of the time, it was only mentioned when they wanted people on
a full flight to gate check their carryons, and then they forgot to mention it
again before boarding the first group (after priority/families/special needs)
at all.

The other half of the problem was that some people decided that "one carryon
that goes under the seat in front of you" meant 1 personal item plus 1 carryon
(e.g. your usual limitation). So you basically had like 5-6 idiots with the
largest carryon bags possible and a ginormous purse or shopping bag getting
into the line with the people with only one backpack or carrying a laptop
sleeve, and these weren't people with priority boarding or special needs. The
Virgin employees never said anything to them, if they even noticed the extra
bags.

I wonder why it offset gains, I really do.

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timjahn
I find it hard to believe this is anything more than a desperate attempt to
add more fees and theoretically, more revenue.

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masterzora
For lack of better words, "Why so cynical?"

The speed of random boarding versus other viable methods is not a new result:
I first heard about it years ago and I'm pretty sure it was old then.

(I emphasise viable because I'm pretty sure nothing can beat a perfectly
strict back-to-front, but there's no way you're going to get that to actually
happen with real customers.)

My real question is how changing boarding order affects the volume of overhead
bins used. They kept emphasising that in the article, but I don't know what
spacetime warping they are using.

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lutorm
_My real question is how changing boarding order affects the volume of
overhead bins used. They kept emphasising that in the article, but I don't
know what spacetime warping they are using._

It could conceivably affect the way people stuff things into the overhead
bins, so that baggage fits better, in some unconscious way.

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fellowniusmonk
Sorry, I feel like I missed something. How is this different than Southwest?

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fredleblanc
Where as Southwest has open seating (no assigned seats) and boarding groups,
this _has_ assigned seating, with those seats being placed into groups at
random rather than by location in the plane.

