Better Ways to Board an Airplane
Waiting is an ordinary part of air travel. We wait in line to check in two hours before we’re set to board. We wait in the terminal, flicking through the newspaper, browsing the internet on our phones, or eating overpriced airport food. And we wait as our fellow passengers board the plane, checking the clock to see if we’ll be taking off on time.
According to Boeing Aero Magazine, boarding times slowed down between 1968 and 1998 by more than half, and they’ve probably gotten slower because checking a bag has become more expensive. A lot of people cram as much as they can into one carry-on bag and take up precious minutes trying to stuff it into the overhead compartments, or worse, realizing that it’s too big and having to check it in after all.
Slow turnaround times are expensive for airlines, but they make a profit selling early boarding passes, so they may not want to speed up the process.
Some tests and computer simulations suggest that boarding could be much more efficient.
Most airlines board their planes from the back to the front. This seems logical, but as passengers are trying to access the same rows and overheads at the same time, the inevitable traffic jam begins.
Mythbusters, a popular TV science show, ran a number of simulations to see if this method could be improved. They found that the back to front method took around 25 minutes. U.S. Airways boards people in a random order; this was found to be about 7 minutes faster.
An even faster method is ‘outside in.’ People seated by the windows boarded first, followed by those in the middle and then passengers with aisle seats. Mythbusters found that this was 10 minutes faster than the back to front method.
Southwest Airlines, however, goes one step further: passengers board at random and are free to sit wherever they want. This method is slightly quicker than outside in.
As for why airlines continue to stick with the back to front method, the answer is still up in the air.
