A discussion on the United forum regarding door closing vs. departure time prompted me to want to start a thread on how to get people to board faster. By coincidence the WSJ today ran a front-page article on this - see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1130...me_page_one_us if you have a subscription.

Seems there are 2-3 factors at work - the article covers things like the obvious order in which you board, some new methods used by various carriers, etc. I like the stats - in the 1960s, they boarded 20 people/minute, but now it's down to 9; that is striking. So is research that letting people board at random is faster than back-to-front.

The other major factor to me seems to be individuals paying attention to the process, getting out of the aisles, helping speed along flow, etc. The article mentions that the Japanese can unload AND load 560 people on a 747 in 35 minutes, versus 90 in the U.S.

So, what can we individually and the larger body public do to reduce boarding times? How to educate and train people, how to improve aircraft design or boarding procedures ?