Comments on: The Plane Truth: Boarding by Rows Is the Worst Possible Way, Says Physicist

By: Elena

Elena — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:39:00 +0000

Boarding last would be a good idea, if overhead space didn’t fill up so fast, now that airlines charge extra fees for checking bags. Often if you wait, there’s no room in the overhead bins and the flight attendants have to check your bags, and you end up having to spend time to claim it.

By: Robert E. Coli

Robert E. Coli — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:44:30 +0000

Simply pay a little extra and board first with the other ASSOLs…
http://www.thrombyair.com/2010/09/assured-seat-selection-overhead-luggage-space-option-assols-2/

By: Alastair

Alastair — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 04:47:19 +0000

It doesn’t matter if people get assigned seats inside the plane or in the waiting area – there are too many morons who would still stuff it up. I don’t understand how people get it wrong but they do! Maybe just ban stupid and inefficient people from flying!

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:44:52 +0000

Awh sweet memories of what flying was like. I am proud I decided a few years ago there was nowhere I would ever want to go so badly as to submit to the discomfort and indignity of air travel.

By: BJB

BJB — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:08:39 +0000

My only travel request would be to make it a Federal crime to put your carry-on luggage in an overhead space more than an row away from your seat. People come on, pop their bag over row 5 and head back to row 22. The guy in row 5 has to wind up with his bag in the back of the plane and needs to let the entire plane get off before he can swim upstream to get his bag. The original idiot grabs his bag on the way out. Should be a death penalty for it.

By: Balicon

Balicon — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:34:48 +0000

Flying is the most polluting human activity there is. Just stop flying. Frequent fliers are environmental criminals. Just stop whining and get on the bus.

By: Jane

Jane — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:41:28 +0000

I am a flight attendant for a major airline and I hate boarding with a passion. It is the most stressful part of the whole flight experience for everyone concerned, passengers and crew.

However I have the perfect panacea from my own perspective; I always choose to work in the galley where I am extremely busy during the boarding process. Problem solved! Ha!

By: Flyer

Flyer — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:47:17 +0000

I’ve found the best approach to airplane travel is to practice deafness. It really helps you tune out the incessant discourteous/useless conversation around you and the whiners eventually give up begging you to do them a favor to satisfy their own selfishness. As an added bonus it makes the TSA people do more work. OK, so it slows things down but the reality is everyone is in a hurry which is what makes the whole process slow down – if everyone would take it easy and relax (the plane isn’t going to leave any earlier anyway and it’s probably going to be late anyway) the process would probably go faster. Haste makes waste.

What they should really do is pass out Xanax at the terminal entrances.

By: Ronald S. Boyd

Ronald S. Boyd — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:11:51 +0000

On a trip to England a few years ago we flew out of Gatwick airport (LGW). The system they employed worked quite well. We were called for boarding When the aircraft wasn’t even there yet. All of our documents and boarding passes were checked and were were seated in a long room. When the aircraft was ready for boarding…we boarded. No doc check nothing just get on the plane and get in your seat. Fastest boarding procedure I have ever seen. The final boarding order was random (as random as we were in the long room) and worked quite well.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:31:44 +0000

Last time i flew, i sat next to an obnoxious slob. He ordered a drink, complained about not getting it fast enough, spilled it on himself, ranted about it, and so on. Very amusing. The steward eventually upgraded him to 1st class, and offered me a free drink. By being evil, he got a free upgrade. By being oblivious, i got a free drink and two seats to myself.

He was also obvivious to the obvious humor of the situation. Apparently, there are people who live in a similar, but non-overlapping world to the one i live in.

By: AHodge

AHodge — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:22:32 +0000

i forgot
charge for checked bags so everyone tries to bring on the max or more

By: AHodge

AHodge — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:19:29 +0000

dont forget to add
send in all the disabled and women w children and huge gear first
seat the first class first in front of the plane
send in all the other random priority folks
add a nice mix of obese chatty folks with baggage problems with no clue of everyone backed up behind them and folks trying to rearrange seats last minute

but agree w peter southwest does decent job

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:00:37 +0000

The problem is that no man is going to board first while his wife (or substitute any combination of genders and commitment levels) stays behind and waits for her turn to be called in. Or, if that does happen, the man is going to be carrying both rolling bags with him and/or using his second bag to save space in the bin for his wife’s bag. Or the man will wait behind with his wife and therefore clog up the works anyway.

I never put anything in the overhead bins, if I can help it. I carry a soft bag that can fit beneath the seat, and then when the flight’s in the air, I pull it back to the front of my own seat and stretch my legs over it.

The whole philosophy of “carry on only” brought about by baggage fees has been one of the worst decisions in terms of passenger comfort.

I also tend to be leisurely about boarding, but recently I was sitting there finishing up some work pre-flight, with still ten minutes before the boarding had to be complete, and the gate agents announced that they were closing the doors. I guess they could see the two remaining passengers waiting and wanted to herd us onto the plane so they could close up and get a coffee break. So we got up and went through the door, to find ourselves at the back of the long line of people in the jetway. Thanks, Delta!

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:22:54 +0000

Uh, Southwest Airlines has been boarding that way for quite some time and boarding goes quickly and smoothly. No Steffen method. How about the Southwest method?

By: Stephen Karlson

Stephen Karlson — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:19:35 +0000

There’s going to be no resolution until air carriers figure out how to sell seats without assigning seats, and until airplanes are better suited to loading or unloading through more than one door. Amtrak is able to beat the air carriers downtown-to-downtown in the Pacific Northwest and in the Northeast Corridor in part because trains can load and unload through multiple doors.

By: Flintstones Fan

Flintstones Fan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:49:58 +0000

Why the “l” in the acronym for Window, Middle, Aisle? And where does the “i” come from?

With the “i” and the “l” it spells “Wilma.” Cute, pronounceable, and worthy of a place in the acronym hall of fame.

Another good way to board easily is to find a person traveling alone with multiple children. Offer to help get him/her onto the plane and enjoy the pre-board.

My son pulled this one. He was flying home from college where he had broken his ankle about 12 hours after fraternity rush started. Hmmmm. He was given a removable boot towards the end of the healing so he could bathe, etc. At Christmas time when everything is crazy, he strapped on the boot, went to the gate agent with a tale of woe, and got on the plane before the pilots did.

By: Sig

Sig — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:17:48 +0000

I fly a lot and could never understand why people are so crazy to join the big crush to get to a reserved seat. In my experience the plane always leaves at the same time for everyone. Never had any competition for boarding last.

It only makes sense to charge on early for those airlines that are too lax to enforce their own carry-on rules.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:15:29 +0000

Airlines don’t choose their boarding method for efficiency, they do it for crowd control.

By: smlyc

smlyc — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:03:54 +0000

A contributing problem, regardless of method, is passenger noncompliance. EVERY flight has the person who is more important than everyone else and disregards the rules.

If it were up to me, I’d implement two things:
(1) no seat changes after T minus x hours – no exceptions; and
(2) bakery-style take-a-number when you arrive at airport – you scan your boarding pass, & it gets stamped (or e-stamped) with a “pull-tag” number. A few minutes before boarding everyone is told to line up in numerical order by pull-tag. Yes, like primary school. (It’s really not that hard or time-consuming.) Attempted line-jumpers have their tickets canceled and they are bodily ejected from the airport.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:57:42 +0000

The worst part of boarding a plane comes after you sit down. Everyone around you takes out their phone and calls someone and says “I’m on the plane in Chicago, and we are about to take off. Gotta go.” Then as soon as the wheels are back on the ground, they pull out the phone and it’s “We have just landed in Atlanta. I’ll call you later. Bye.” Thank God we can’t use our phones in the air, there would be updates every quarter hour. Hey people, you have a phone in your pocket. If someone needs to know where you are, THEY CAN CALL YOU. Compared to this annoyance, being herded aboard with cattle prods would be a pleasure.

By: Sherry

Sherry — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:23:19 +0000

I fly as rarely as possible but notice a lot of helpful fellow travelers during the boarding and unboarding (wd?) process, i.e. taller folks helping shorter folks to get luggage in and out of the overhead compartments.

As to boarding order, wouldn’t a mix of SWA’s boarding by zones, along with assigned seats printed on the boarding pass be worth a try? Perhaps those seat assignments could take into account the luggage we carry and whether we are traveling alone or with someone. Several use cases: (a) traveling alone with bag, (b) traveling alone without bag, (c) traveling with another with bag(s), (d) traveling with another without bag(s), (e) traveling with child(ren) with bag(s), (f) traveling with child(ren) with bag(s). Well, I couldn’t write the program, but it’s not rocket science.

By: Mr. Winston

Mr. Winston — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:12:47 +0000

I travel a lot for work and have built status to where I board first and sit closer to the front of the plane. Sure, the Delta method may be slower, but to be guaranteed an overhead compartment is worth something. Also, those sitting in the back of the plane seem to gravitate to putting their rollerbags in the first available space…many times on the front of the plane. This slows things down, and in my case would cause there to be no room overhead for my carryons unless I walked to the back of the plane. Also, zones 1 and 2 on Delta tend to be seasoned travelers, knowing how to pack their bags and knowing how to fit their luggage in the overhead.

By: LR

LR — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:07:39 +0000

Um. I get that the Tevatron is shutting down, but is this seriously what Fermilab is spending its resources on now?

By: Z H

Z H — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:26:25 +0000

Good academic exercise but it won’t work in real life. People would waste time complaining that the airline was following an inefficient loading method instead of the common “back-to-front”. The guy in the back-row who otherwise would get first loading privileage would write to the airline, promising never to fly, because they didn’t let him board first. God forbid if people closer to the back are ever blocked by someone closer to the front for 5 seconds.

Seriously, when dealing with people, psychology is more important.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 06:11:13 +0000

Southwest is not random, they have assigned boarding numbers. It’s the seating that is random which works except on full flights and then some family with kids is late to the gate and makes people switch seats.

All in all, I prefer Southwest’s method. Check in early if you want the front of the plane. The problem is the early loaders put their luggage at the front of the plane then go to the middle or back which fills the overhead compartments over empty seats.

By: Gene Callahan

Gene Callahan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:31:48 +0000

“Smart money would label and lay out the seats in the terminal in the same fashion as those in the plane”

Which would be great. If there was only one sort of plane in the world.

By: Davo

Davo — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 03:39:36 +0000

Fat and smelly people should be banned too. It won’t make it much quicker – just a more pleasant flight.

By: aero_schmidt

aero_schmidt — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:48:02 +0000

People completely ignore any boarding system unless its enforced, which is why most of them suck. Most people will try to board regardless of when they are supposed to including during early-boarding for handicap. Smaller airports aren’t as bad due to comparatively low volume but boarding in Chicago or Atlanta is always a nightmare. Too many obese self-important business types trying to edge on before they are supposed to and with like 4 carry-ons that fill up the overheard bins.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:51:41 +0000

I like random boarding. I read or work on my computer in the terminal until everyone else is on, then stroll on at the last minute, walk straight to my seat, and rarely have anyone in the way

So, the idea of lining up on order of seats? No thanks.

By: Shane M

Shane M — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:44:39 +0000

Hurry up and wait. I don’t fly alot but is boarding / deboarding really a bottleneck?

Additionally, why are seats aligned shoulder to shoulder. Certain staggers of seating would seem to provide a more comfortable arrangement with increased shoulder space for all