Timeline for Why do airlines seat people the way they do?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 20, 2016 at 17:51 | history | edited | JonathanReez♦ |
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| Sep 2, 2016 at 0:01 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackTravel/status/771498215426449409 | ||
| Sep 1, 2016 at 14:55 | vote | accept | El Bromista | ||
| Sep 1, 2016 at 14:51 | comment | added | vasin1987 | Related : aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17593/… | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 10:28 | comment | added | Fattie | @ElBromista - any number of airlines do, as a matter of course, board those at the rear first, and so on. Have you not flown United? They have a (to my mind, ridiculous) system of complex numbered lanes and so on; exactly as you seem to envisage. | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 9:51 | comment | added | nsn | @pnuts I actually disagree. LCCs are very interested in passenger efficiency. Flying is what pays them not being on land loading passengers. Eg.: Ryanair now indicates on the ticket which door you should use according to your sit number. | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 9:44 | answer | added | jcaron | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 9:30 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | ... In practice my limited experience has been that passenger boarding is almost always a "hurry up and wait" experience, and that the passengers will be ready before the plane is. Go us, we rock. However, on occasion the plane does start rolling (apparently) the instant the last passenger sits down, and on those rare occasions there'd be some benefit in speeding up passenger loading. | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 9:27 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | Do note that passenger boarding is not necessarily the limiting step in turning the plane around. For example, if checked luggage is loading at the same time as passenger boarding, then there is no benefit in reducing passenger boarding time any further than luggage loading time. The important thing is to minimise the probability that passenger boarding takes excessively long rather than to minimise a typical boarding time that's already been slotted into the choreography of turning the plane around. If they're sticking to a method it may well be because it's "good enough". | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 9:16 | history | edited | mts |
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| Sep 1, 2016 at 4:46 | comment | added | Joel | The real issue is getting off the plane. Few processes are more inefficient. How many times do you get someone who steps into the aisle (blocking every single person behind them) reach up for their luggage and then move. Then someone a row back does the same thing. And again. And again... | |
| Sep 1, 2016 at 1:36 | answer | added | Rich | timeline score: 8 | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 23:40 | comment | added | Eric McCormick | Yes, that's what they talked about. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 23:38 | comment | added | Peter M | @EricMcCormick The random methodology was only 30 or 40 seconds faster than the WMA method out of a 14 minute long process. And airlines are using the WMA method. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 22:41 | comment | added | Eric McCormick | The MythBusters covered some of the boarding methodologies in one of their episodes. It would seem that random seating (as close to it as possible) was what they observed to be the fastest. The use of the seemingly randomly assigned "groups" appears to be such an attempt. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 20:55 | answer | added | Peter M | timeline score: 5 | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 20:36 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | In my experience, especially on routes catering to business travelers during peak business travel times (say, Friday afternoon US transcon flights), first class + platinum + gold + silver frequent fliers (and sometimes credit card holders get lumped into group 2 or so) can be 75+% of the passengers. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 20:09 | answer | added | 3Dave | timeline score: 12 | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 20:03 | comment | added | choster | One of the expectations of StackExchange is that you have attempted some initial research on your own. There are numerous articles and studies about aircraft boarding order, and airlines are constantly tweaking the way they organize their groups. See e.g. Bloomberg, Wired, CNT. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 19:53 | comment | added | phoog | In my experience the group numbers are very closely dependent on where you sit, the idea being to get the people into the plane roughly from back to front, as @pnuts notes. The problem comes with the fact that there are only a few groups, so the groups are large, so you still get people being held up by those stowing their luggage, and also that while they prevent people who are in the front from boarding early, they don't prevent people who are in the back from boarding late. Someone with a group 2 pass can board after group 5 is called. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 19:48 | answer | added | DTRT | timeline score: 34 | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 19:47 | comment | added | Relaxed | There have been studies and there are more efficient ways (not necessarily row-by-row, this sounds too complicated to enforce in practice). But there are also other considerations, inertia and it's very difficult not to have people clumping up near a counter everywhere there is a bottleneck. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 19:47 | comment | added | El Bromista | @pnuts I guess I should make it clear that the airline most notorious for this is American on their domestic flights. Usually when I book I do so through priceline/hotwire/etc. And American tends to be the dominant airline in those sites with the best prices that aren't ridiculous. | |
| Aug 31, 2016 at 19:34 | history | asked | El Bromista | CC BY-SA 3.0 |