Boarding school

By N.B. | WASHINGTON, D.C.

BOARDING a plane takes too long and is often the most stressful part of a flight. Whenever a new group is called, there's a mad rush for the gate, sometimes complete with pushing and shoving. This has only got worse with the advent of checked-bag fees. Everyone wants to bring their luggage into the cabin, but the limited space often means that only the first few groups can get their rolling suitcases on board. On the plane, everything moves at the pace of the slowest person, who invariably takes an eternity to get out of the aisle and let other passengers pass.

Boarding time matters to airlines' bottom lines. Each extra minute a plane spends at the terminal costs $30, according to an estimate published in The Economist in 2011. Saving a minute on each flight could save Delta Air Lines, which operates over 5,000 flights per day, more than $50m a year.

There has to be a better way. But airlines have mixed feelings about prioritising boarding speed—for example, nearly all of them allow their most loyal customers to get on the plane before zone- or row-based boarding begins. (Obtaining elite frequent-flyer status remains the most effective way to ensure you get on your plane as early as possible.) In 2011, I wrote about Jason Steffen, a particle physicist who believed he had discovered a more efficient way to board planes. But his method was tougher to understand than boarding by rows or groups, and as far as I can determine, no airline has embraced it.

So if new ways of selecting which customers board first doesn't work, what does? Ted Reed of Forbes writes often about boarding processes, and he notes that American Airlines' new idea—letting customers without large bags board before customers with them—failed at Virgin America. One way to ensure that you can board a plane quickly turns out to be infrastructure. At Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Singapore Airlines can board a 470-passenger A380 in a remarkable 45 minutes. One reason is that an A380 has multiple aisles, which means that slow passengers don't necessarily delay everyone behind them. But the big key is that the new terminal at LAX has three jetways per A380, so passengers are getting on the plane at three different points. That's efficiency.

Another fast-boarding trick was pioneered by Spirit Airlines, of $7 canned-wine fame. Spirit charges high fees to discourage people from bringing bags into the cabin—it's actually cheaper to check one. It works: Spirit can board a 174-seat A320 in about 20 minutes, according to Mr Reed. Mr Steffen might not be proud, but an economist would be.