Originally Posted by themicah
Southwest doesn't have assigned seats. They board according to elite status and checkin time, and people grab whatever seat is open, which ends up being faster than any system with assigned seats tried so far.
If you have assigned seats, however, boarding all-at-once is extremely inefficient. Boarding from the back is better, but is still not optimal. See
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70689-0.html
That article shows what can be done in the best possible situation, but with confirmed seats, some order has to occur. As the article says... if there's no assigned seating, people take care of themselves. But with assigned seating, people are trying to get to a specific location (usually first), and getting in each other's way.
Originally Posted by baccarat_king
Yesterday afternoon, LAS-DTW
Boarding "seemed" organized.
F first --- followed by a pause for a few minutes; and then, very specifically, Elite Passengers --- not sure how it continued after that; though, seemed that the rear was filling up first...
Too odd. Two different flights, with the same city pair (DTW-LAS), with two different boarding patterns.
Originally Posted by inthchips
This sounds like what AS has done for the last couple years before finally giving it up and going back to a more orderly (although I haven't seen it personally yet) form of boarding. It had created chaos at the boarding doors, to say the least, not to mention the mess inside the plane. Thankfully, AS has come to its senses and dropped the idea.
And that was what this flight was like. Chaos.
I defer back to my original question... has anyone else heard of this no-Elite no-row-order boarding process? Or was this just a GA modification to the no-Elite process, to get the pax onto the jetway? I'll be honest... it really looked like the GAs were more interested in just getting the people checked-in (in any order), and going on to the next flight. It really gave me the idea that the GAs could really screw with the FAs, if the GAs just dumped the pax down the jetway, in any order. The flight had a ton of standbys, upgrades, etc, so I'm sure the flights keep the GAs busy. But dumping the pax past the counter, and onto the FAs, in a disorganized way, just made things worse...
Steve B.