The search for speedy boarding

By A.B.

BACK in 2008 an astrophysicist named Jason Steffen published his plan for improving the speed at which people board aeroplanes. It's a relatively complicated proposal: passengers board in alternate rows, from the back, with all those in window seats taking their places before their neighbours in middle and then aisle seats. (This post has an explanatory image.) But the method did not attract wider attention until 2011, when it was tested against four other plane-boarding methods, including "random" and "back to front", and found to be the quickest.

Dr Steffen's idea has yet to catch on, however, with the airlines. Passengers with small children do get to board first, but the fact that the method requires other people sitting together to board separately—not great if you're an adult with two eight-year-olds—is off-putting. And its instructions are probably more complicated than many passengers need. If your boarding system cannot be easily understood by a group of teenagers listening to iPods and showing off, you probably need something else.

With each minute that an aircraft sits on the stand reputedly costing airlines $30, the incentive to reduce boarding times is clear. Spirit Airlines, for example, charges people a fee for cabin baggage, and thus has fewer passengers clogging up the aisle trying to shove bags into the overhead lockers. Other carriers allow passengers who are travelling with bags that can be put under a seat to board first and get out of the way. Many airlines, though, still just get passengers to board randomly or in blocks from the back, which is the slower of the two according to the test mentioned above.

So this is a field that could do with some new thinking. It's just as well, then, that Rob Wallace, an Australian design engineer, has sent me details of his solution, the “flying carpet”. This is a scaled-down replica of an aircraft seating plan, which is put on the floor of the departure lounge near the exit to the plane. The first passengers ready to board stand on the carpet on the spot that corresponds to their seat. There's room for about 30 people dotted around the carpet before it fills up. They then board as a group, rear row first, and thus should be spread throughout the plane when taking their seats. While they're doing this, another group arrange themselves on the carpet before they go on the plane. And so on.

This approach shares one of the benefits of the Steffen method in that passengers are spread along the aisle finding their seats, not just bunched in one area, as with block boarding. But also it does not require them to obey complicated commands in the departure lounge and allows families to board together. It’s an interesting idea, even if it does not do away with the jams caused by people in aisle seats having to stand up to let window-seaters past. And the departure lounge could turn into a bit of a scrum with 150 passengers gathering round a small carpet. (Though the departure lounge is a better place for a scrum than the aircraft aisle.)

So this may be "a" solution, rather than "the" solution, to the quest for the ultimate in speedy boarding. The search goes on. Gulliver will think of little else over Christmas.