Why Airline Executives are not Rocket Scientists, Part One
November 30th, 2008 by Al Lewis (alewis)How hard is it to load an airplane? Far easier than a frequent flier would assume, as it turns out. But do the people who run these airlines ever fly them? Or are they always in the front cabin and never venture back to coach to see what happens with the rest of us? Well, I’ll save them the trip. Here’s what happens. People stop in the middle of the aisle to stuff things into the overhead bin. So the best-laid plans to load from the rear (letting all the platinum members on first, of course, too) often go astray with lines
Here’s what they should do. Since the constraining factor is use of the overhead bins and standing in the aisles, the people who should be allowed on first are those people carrying one item no larger than a laptop who will NOT be using the overhead bin and who are not sitting in an aisle seat. The aisles will therefore stay clear. Once that happens, load the same way as they load now. With 20%+ of the plane already seated, the overall loading time will be substantially reduced.
The other advantage? It gives people who pay to check bags a lovely consolation gift, of priority boarding. That might also encourage more people to check bags and make them feel better about paying the fee.
Tags: airline, airline economics, flight delays
December 4th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
This guy al lewis has a lot of great ideas! You should get him involed in this oroject.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Great idea. I wonder what the airlines think about it. I’m going to ask my flight attendant daughter-in-law.
DB
December 10th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Can’t work. The current system is a compromise between timeliness (actual time to load), convenience (the public’s ability to comprehend and apply the method), and verification (attendants checking that those boarding should be boarding). This kind of thing works extremely well within the constraints of someone’s brain, or in a computer simulation, but in the real world the efficiency losses in verification and convenience far outweigh the gains in timeliness.