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 ?

This got me thinking, we have elite pre-boarding, how about elite disembarking? Oh how I'd love that, but it would never fly (no pun intended), I think the other customers would have a revolt

Can't remember where or which airline, but someone (recently) is experimenting with boarding all windows first etc. Anyone heard or experienced this?

There was an interesting system at Jakarta last week for a Malaysian Airlines flight. CGK has these mildly odd donut-shaped gate lounges, where entrance from the airport is from one side ("south") and entry to the plane is from the "north", but there's a part in the middle which is not accessible. So as soon as people came to the gate lounge and had their boarding cards processed, they were directed to either the left or right side of the lounge, based on their seat number (no, not just biz/eco, but actual seat number). Boarding was then done by first opening the left door for C/F and people in the back, then the right door for people sitting up front.

It seemed to work pretty well, but obviously you need a strangely shaped lounge for this, and I've never seen another airline attempt this, even at CGK.

This is standard practice on some airlines. I've seen the boarding zones on LH, for example, arranged in this fashion for widebody (and A321) shorthauls - whether they choose to enforce it or not is a different matter.

Another way to speed things up is to properly enforce reasonable carry-on limits.

Second the motion. I grow tired of having some jacka** mashing his/her oversized suitcase into my softsided carryon in the overhead.

Why can't the airlines / regulatory agencies get together and decide to enforce this consistently. It would make life easier for everyone (except the jacka** of course.) Pick a date, post signs at checkin, and just do it.

Many of the airlines going to "zone" boarding are trying variations of this. Back and windows first, then middles (both middle seats and front to back middle of the aircraft), then front. Of course, pre-baords, elite boarding and F throw a wrench into it.

America West is testing the reverse pyramid strategy, based on some actual research and simulation. I've seen such methods applied to evacuation simulations in the event of fires, and it's good to see it being applied elsewhere.

http://researchmag.asu.edu/stories/airlines.html

I wonder how much of the difference is due to more carry-ons today? Back in those days baggage showed up so much more quickly that there wasn't as much motivation to carry a year's worth of food and clothing on board with you, then try to stuff it into an overhead rack. Racks were smaller then, too: a briefcase, a coat and that was about it. Take away two-thirds of the carry-on stuff, and I think we'd be back up to 20.

Short of revolutionizing baggage retrieval with some really out-of-the-box thinking, I don't know what to do about this, but I believe it's a big part of the reason for slower boarding.
Does it say how much stuff the average Japanese passenger carries on, versus the average American? I can think of many reasons why it might be less, supporting the previous point.

The "average" person who fly in the 60's is also not as old, more mobile, not as fat, and higher in the social spectrum (i.e. better educated) than the "average" person who flies today. [But not only do people have smaller and fewer carry-on, there's also larger seat pitch, so people probably can get into their seat more easily in the past.]

BTW, since the article mentioned Japan, here's an observation I had last Jan in NRT. DL and CO side-by-side. Both 777, the CO plane is 100% full, probably the same for the DL. DL has the "zone" boarding system - and the gate agent pulled out a huge white board and hand-wrote the procedure of the boarding. CO boards back to front.

Anyways, DL boarded, CO boarded. We both pulled out at around the same time. Both fast, efficient, and non-chaotic. At least on flights with a high percentage of Japanese travellers.

So, I'd agree with what the WSJ article concludes. No difference.

I think a lot of it is down to educating passengers to be more efficient.

How many times have we all been delayed by someone who puts his briefcase on his seat, opens it and blocks the aisle while rummaging around retrieving things he wants during the flight?

Wouldn't life be so much easier if everybody could get into the habit of transferring their books, sweets and water bottles into a smaller bag before boarding? That way it would just be a case of "get on - put carry-on in locker - sit down", and boarding would be so much quicker!