[HN Gopher] The Fill and Flush deplaning method
___________________________________________________________________
The Fill and Flush deplaning method
Author : very_good_man
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-08-17 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fillandflush.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fillandflush.com)
| riffic wrote:
| you actually expect people to abide by this?
|
| people default to the "f you, I've got mine" mentality so there's
| no way this will work.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| "great" if you travel with kids/family.
| gobills2024 wrote:
| Brilliant! I Would love to see this improvement.
| very_good_man wrote:
| I have "invented" a system that I believe reduces aircraft
| deplaning time by ~50%
|
| source code at: www.github.com/josephecombs/fill-flush
| tuckerwatts wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| bdcravens wrote:
| Ignores idea that overhead bags sometimes end up behind the row.
| Even if you didn't put it there, stewards have the authority to
| move them around, and often will to accommodate other bags.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Is getting off passengers a bottleneck in the whole thing?
| usefulcat wrote:
| Yes, for anyone concerned about missing a subsequent connecting
| flight.
| notahacker wrote:
| The simulation of the status quo makes the assumption that aisle
| seat passengers wait until the row ahead of them is clear before
| collecting their luggage, nobody ever manages to squeeze past
| someone collecting their luggage, nobody in a middle or window
| seat is ever able to retrieve or be given their luggage until the
| aisle opposite them is completely clear, nobody ever walks past
| someone in an aisle or middle seat that hasn't collected their
| luggage yet etc...
|
| Suffice to say, this is not my experience of boarding and leaving
| aircraft.
| very_good_man wrote:
| The simulation assumes that ONE person in the status quo has a
| 0 second assemble belongings step, and just waits "minBuffer"
| time - so in the simulation on average this is 2 second delay
| rather than 5:
|
| https://github.com/josephecombs/fill-flush/blob/fc0fa73b5879...
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| What if your bag is far from your seat?
| netsharc wrote:
| That feels like an American thing, I fly in Europe and my
| luggage is almost always above my head or across the aisle. Do
| American fliers put it in the first space they see in the
| overhead luggage?
| [deleted]
| antonyt wrote:
| In my American experience, flights these days are almost
| always completely full, and almost every passenger is
| bringing both an under-seat and overhead-bin carry-on item.
|
| The last 10% or so of boarders are often left with no
| overhead storage near their seats. The last 5% or so of
| boarders are often left with no overhead storage available at
| all.
|
| "Put it in the first space you see" is often explicitly an
| instruction that the cabin crew gives to boarders as overhead
| space starts dwindling. Passengers aren't doing it out of
| preference.
| dave333 wrote:
| Hard to see such a complex sequence working. Maybe there could be
| a "Aisle passengers without carry on baggage (just a purse
| perhaps)" exit first call. Then follow with the normal row by row
| exit. This would allow people who want a fast exit to achieve
| one.
| burnte wrote:
| I've never seen a plane where there's exactly one person in the
| entire aisle and everyone else waits. Never. So yeah, this is way
| better than a method that doesn't happen.
| very_good_man wrote:
| This happens constantly during deplaning? I think this is a
| little quirk of how the animation is rendering. There are
| "little people" standing in the rows behind whoever is
| currently gathering belongings.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Airlines added baggage fees to capture more revenue. Passengers
| started bringing more carry-on luggage as a result, filling up
| the overhead bins. It now takes longer to gather ultra-heavy,
| overlarge carry-ons from the bins to exit the plane, affecting
| exit times.
|
| Stop nickel-and-diming for luggage and focus on efficiency gains
| like gate-checked small luggage. Add front and back exits to
| every gate ramp to improve boarding and unboarding.
| fferen wrote:
| Idea: deplane by row. Each row leaves when a light in that row
| turns on. An algorithm decides when to turn them on based on
| several factors: keeping large groups together, expected speed of
| deplaning (eg. elderly may be slower), current occupancy of the
| aisle. Advantage: should be very fast, easy to follow, groups
| stay together.
| owlbite wrote:
| I've often wondered whether they could "containerize" passengers
| by having the seating as a whole remove from the plane. People
| then have all the time in the world to get seated outbound, and
| additional space to deplane at their own speed inbound. You could
| even come up with a system for putting luggage directly under
| their seats obviating the need to collect it separately. (It
| would of course be a massive redesign of planes and airports, so
| probably not an easy starter).
| notahacker wrote:
| So passengers crowd into narrow tubes a bit earlier, and then
| the narrow tubes are winched into the aircraft with the sort of
| painstaking precision that takes several minutes? Even assuming
| airframes could be redesigned to make this possible [at zero
| cost, without implications for structural integrity or
| operational complexity of the resulting aircraft] I'm not sure
| who benefits here?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Not sure if it needs to be a tube. Maybe the seats could be
| on a rail that slides into the airplane. Having to move the
| nose and tail of the plane up for this also brings us closer
| to my dream of flushing the entire airplane with Clorox
| between flights.
| notahacker wrote:
| The rails would be fun, I guess
| sodellicious1 wrote:
| This looks incredibly cool, you are surely a very good man
| borland wrote:
| Has this guy ever been on any actual planes? His "Status Quo"
| model is completely unlike any of the planes I've ever been on.
|
| It's easy to improve over a fake strawman
| avidiax wrote:
| I assume that the author has been on planes enough to think
| about this and make a website with a simulation.
|
| It seems fairly realistic to me. People in rows toward the
| front step into the aisle as soon as possible to gather their
| carry-ons. This blocks everyone rearward that already has their
| belongings and is in the aisle from deplaning.
| graypegg wrote:
| Honestly I wonder how much time could be saved on an ultra low
| cost airline by just permanently locking the above head
| compartments that people have to stand in the aisle to use. That
| seems like the biggest hassle.
|
| You could even up-charge for above head storage, but only allow
| seats at the tail of the plane to choose that upgrade. They board
| first, and they deplane last, ideally holding up no one.
|
| This sounds like hell but hey... if it saves a few bucks a seat
| on a really short flight because they can deplane in 5 minutes...
| I'd be for it.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I don't think those are structural. So I think you could even
| remove vast majority of them entirely. Saving in weight thus in
| fuel.
| lwhsiao wrote:
| CGP Grey did a great YouTube video on this several years ago, and
| why airlines won't use it: https://youtu.be/oAHbLRjF0vo
|
| Note that this is from a boarding, not deplaning viewpoint, but
| the concepts are similar.
| rdtsc wrote:
| As others mentioned this only works if we assume no seat classes
| and people not flying in groups.
|
| First class, golden carpet diamond supreme customers won't
| tolerate waiting for someone from the back of the plane to exit.
| Their head would explode probably and they'll vow to never fly
| that airline.
|
| But overall the problem is that people fly in groups and they
| like to sit together. Sending the kid out while the parent waits
| for the next column to deplane will never happen. Should the
| people in groups wait then, but a good part of the plane will
| just stay waiting and it's back to the existing algorithm anyway.
| mabbo wrote:
| > Unresolved Issues:
|
| > How to educate passengers
|
| The author vastly overestimates peoples willingness to do
| literally anything that benefits the group rather than
| themselves.
|
| It does not matter if every single person goes through a six week
| course on why this system is better: at least 20% will still
| ignore it to get themselves off the plane sooner. "I have a
| connection! I'm in a hurry! My Mom is waiting for me!".
|
| You want a better system? Design one that works best when
| everyone is greedy and maximizing their own benefit.
| very_good_man wrote:
| This is why I think it's important to emphasize the raw number
| of lives saved. There are winners and losers in both systems,
| so important to focus on the lives saved by adopting something
| now. We'd need strong social penalties for any deviant action
| that blocks the aisle.
| yodon wrote:
| Reducing passenger loading and unloading times (also called "Turn
| Times" in the industry) is a surprisingly hard problem that has
| been and continues to be heavily studied.
|
| Field studies watching actual passengers loading actual planes
| (as opposed to computer simulations of theoretical "people"
| loading theoretical planes) frequently show the fastest loading
| when passengers are lined up randomly, ahead of any of the more
| seemingly "intelligent" approaches that work great in computer
| simulations. If the "best practice" algorithms can't even beat
| the random algorithm in a field study, that's a sign this is a
| much harder and much messier problem than it appears to be.
|
| Just about any google search, like "airplane passenger loading
| research", will return more than a dozen theoretical and field
| studies on the first page of hits, including:
|
| [0]The Role of Computer Simulation in Reducing Airplane Turn
| Time,
| https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_01/texto...
|
| [1]A Simulation Study Regarding Different Aircraft Boarding
| Strategies,
| https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/19651/145014...
|
| [2]Analysis of Airplane Boarding Times,
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220244330_Analysis_...
|
| [3]Efficient Aircraft Boarding Strategies,
| https://labs.engineering.asu.edu/ilpil/research/efficient-ai...
|
| [4]Passengers boarding airplanes: we're doing it wrong,
| https://theconversation.com/passengers-boarding-airplanes-we...
|
| [5]The Best Way to Board a Plane,
| https://phys.org/news/2008-02-board-plane.html
|
| [6]Loading an Airliner Is Rocket Science,
| https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/business/loading-an-airli...
|
| [7]Comparative Study of Aircraft Boarding Strategies Using
| Cellular Discrete Event Simulation,
| https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/4/4/57
|
| [8]Intelligent Boarding Modelling and Evaluation: A Simulation-
| Based Approach,
| https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jat/2021/9973336/
|
| [9]Improving airplane boarding boarding time: a review, a field
| study and an experiment with a new way of hand luggage stowing,
| https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1200&co...
|
| [10]A Comparison of Algorithms That Estimate the Effectiveness of
| Commercial Airline Boarding Strategies,
| https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&co...
|
| [11]The Mathematics of Aircraft Boardingg,
| https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_06.htm...
|
| (among many others)
| very_good_man wrote:
| I have seen many of these results and did not find a lot on the
| very specific issue of DE-planing. Most of this stuff discusses
| boarding.
| muffinator3000 wrote:
| Clever
| sergiotapia wrote:
| In all of my flights I've seen that people allow the row in front
| of them to deplane first. It's just courtesy I've seen. Is this
| similar to "fill and flush"?
| very_good_man wrote:
| That is modeled as "status quo" - this unfortunately leads to
| waste of the scarce aisle real estate, a resource that is
| better used in "Fill & Flush."
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Airlines would bastardize this by doing it by class then column,
| as you can't have steerage riff raff get off before double
| platinum diamond medallion clearly superior than you first class.
|
| In that model, would it faster or slower for someone in the
| middle of end of the plane?
| redhale wrote:
| Unfortunately this is just about as useful as economic theories
| that rely on perfectly rational consumers. Good on paper,
| worthless in the face of human nature.
| beders wrote:
| Works well when done with robots.
|
| Now simulate it with humans who really want to get off that
| flying toilet that has been their home for 12 hours. No amount of
| education will suffice.
| srcreigh wrote:
| The simulation is overly simplistic.
|
| If someone in row 3 finishes their bags, the other people in row
| 3 don't always hold up the line for the rest of the plane.
|
| - some people prefer to sit and wait
|
| - some people let others through before blocking the aisle
|
| Anyway, I think "let some people through before you get your
| bags" is also way easier for people to understand.
| drewg123 wrote:
| The big problem is getting bags out of the overheads. So I think
| the best way to get people off planes quickly would be to prevent
| as many people as possible from carrying on luggage.
|
| There are 2 reasons people use carry-ons rather than checked
| bags. First, because its cheaper for people w/o status, and
| second because they're worried about the airline loosing their
| luggage, and/or they don't want to wait for their bags.
|
| To negate the first reason for carry-ons using a carrot + stick
| approach, I'd offer 2 free checked bags to everyone regardless of
| status, along with charging $100 or more per carry-on.
|
| The second reason might be harder. The airlines would need to re-
| negotiate deals with their credit card company partners (suddenly
| the free checked back with the Delta Amex plat. card doesn't mean
| anything) and change their frequent flier programs, and they'd
| need to get better at bag handling in general.
| danparsonson wrote:
| There's also option three - fear of damage or theft. Short of a
| guarantee that my baggage will be handled by a generously paid
| individual who will treat it with the tenderness of a lover,
| I'd rather take care of my laptop, camera + lens, etc. myself.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| Better off watching CGP Grey's video "The Better Boarding Method
| Airlines Won't Use" which has more discussion of the topic, more
| simulations, and puts forward better methods that are either
| faster or allow families to remain grouped.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo
|
| This is basically https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0733 but differs to
| the paper in that it doesn't consider: alternating odd-and-even
| row disembarkment, which would give passengers more aisle space
| to potentially speed-up luggage handling.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I recommend not reading it. It made me a less happy traveller.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| It is absurd to imagine that the passenger in the first row
| window seat gives a flying fuck about the disembarking time of
| the last passenger, and then build a model on that absurdity and
| present it as a serious suggestion.
| very_good_man wrote:
| I think in practice, if 1F could sneak out without blocking the
| aisle, it doesn't matter. The true important thing is that the
| aisle not be blocked. The aisle space is the limited resource.
| There are even more "lassiez-faire" versions of this simulation
| that could somehow try to model "unregimented" standing. Might
| be worth doing.
| roland35 wrote:
| There is a great video from CGP Grey about the similar problem of
| boarding an airplane: https://youtu.be/oAHbLRjF0vo
|
| Unfortunately, having flown many times, I just don't see humans
| ever being able to self organize to this degree, especially at
| the end of a flight!
| throw7 wrote:
| "How First Class is handled."
|
| That's by far the easiest issue to handle: don't change a
| thing... they get off first exactly how they do now.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This would defeat the economics of class seats, which is way more
| important for the airline than getting people out the aircraft,
| and it does not address the obvious issue with carry on luggage,
| which is an even bigger problem in single aisle aircrafts.
|
| And more obviously, the level of coordination required to make it
| work is just not worth it. Families flying together, babies,
| people with disabilities, etc., none are considered in the model.
| aeternum wrote:
| The more obvious solution is to also use the rear door in
| addition to the front. Airlines could then charge a premium for
| those seats as well. No big coordination effort is needed, but
| it would require some new jetways or some terminal
| reconfiguration. Other countries do this frequently with no
| major problems.
| piva00 wrote:
| Isn't that common in the US? In Europe it's quite usual to
| have the front door on the jetway for the first half of
| seats, and a staircase for boarding the last half through the
| rear door. Thought it was normal procedure, it varies a bit
| per country and airport here but is common enough, I'd say
| more than 50% of my flights are configured that way.
| cameldrv wrote:
| It's pretty uncommon in the U.S. to board a plane from
| stairs on the tarmac. There's almost always a gate. I
| haven't seen the "gate for the front, stairs for the back"
| loading style in Europe, but I've seen two sets of stairs
| pretty often. If the goal is to save passenger time and
| inconvenience, having to take a bus out to a hard stand is
| definitely not worth the payoff of being able to load from
| both ends.
|
| Loading and unloading from both ends is a lot faster
| though. United actually had a double ended gate that they
| were trying out years ago in Denver, which is the best of
| both worlds and saves a ton of time loading and unloading.
| It's this really long cantilever thing over the wing to
| reach the rear entrance. Unfortunately something broke on
| it one time and the jet bridge fell onto the wing, damaging
| the airplane, and they gave up on it.
| aeternum wrote:
| You shouldn't need a bus because the plane is at the
| gate. Stairs might be an issue for some but anyone that
| does not want to go down then back up stairs can wait and
| go out the front through the jetway.
|
| As others have pointed out, this method works great in
| many other countries.
| TylerE wrote:
| The tarmac at an airport is dangerous, noisy place. You
| don't want people wandering off.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > In Europe it's quite usual to have the front door on the
| jetway for the first half of seats, and a staircase for
| boarding the last half through the rear door.
|
| This is definitely not usual.
|
| Admittedly, I haven't been to all airports across the US or
| Europe, but I have been to quite a few, and have yet to see
| people boarding from the front and back. Closest perhaps
| was a double bridge used on an Emirates A380.
| piva00 wrote:
| I just got a flight Stockholm-Prague a week ago, we
| boarded from both doors. In May I went Stockholm-Zurich,
| boarded from both doors, then Zurich-Lisbon, same.
|
| Last time I flew to Berlin with EasyJet it also boarded
| from both doors, now that I'm listing it I can only
| remember a flight from Oslo-Stockholm with Norwegian
| where the boarding was done only through the front door.
| Most of the flights I've taken the past 2 years have
| boarded from both entrances, I feel it's quite usual.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I haven't been to any of those airports, except for
| Lisbon. Didn't see any front and back boarding in there.
| Neither in BCN, MAD, LHR, LGW, IST, or AMS. I have
| boarded and de-boarded from the back (but not from the
| front) in a handful of smaller Spanish airports, though.
|
| In the US, I would say that it is not usual at all, or I
| have been to the wrong airports (IAD, DFW, AUS, IAH, SFO,
| LAX, JFK, LGA, CLT, ORD). I haven't seen this either in
| Asia.
|
| Perhaps this is highly airport dependent? Still, I would
| think that this is far from common.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| But did the front use the jetway and the back stairs?
| I've seen stairs on both, but have never seen this mix at
| any airport anywhere.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I think that all flights in Europe I've taken with low
| cost airlines had both front and back entries (and
| exits). My memory good back to maybe 10 years and 4-10
| flights a year.
|
| I used to fly much, much more but I do not remember that
| far in the past.
| toast0 wrote:
| Jetways for boarding and deboarding is most common in the
| US. A near requirement because of the Americans with
| Disabilities Act, which requires reasonable accommodations
| for people with disabilities, and a jetway is deemed
| reasonable for people who can't do stairs.
|
| Some airports will revert to passenger stairways when
| there's more planes to put passengers on, and the weather
| permits. Airports that often do that, may also sometimes
| use passenger stairways to accelerate deboarding, but
| passengers aren't very good at doing that; and when
| overhead bin storage is tight, you may have placed your
| items in a bin too far forward to retrieve it while
| passenger motion is towards aft stairs. I can't recall
| seeing boarding from the front and aft simultaneously.
|
| Very very occasionally, I've seen or heard of airports set
| up to attach multiple jetbridges to a single aircraft, but
| that's going to be pretty complex geometry because distance
| between the front door and the aft door on different planes
| varies widely.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The more obvious solution is to also use the rear door in
| addition to the front.
|
| Now you have to play with the airport itself. Most wouldn't
| have enough bridges to lend two per gate.
| very_good_man wrote:
| -First Class can keep getting off first, you still get the
| benefits if you apply this to Coach
|
| -Groups can wait for later "Flush" es - there is flexibility
| since I think you can fit a little more than one person in the
| aisle per row.
| jghn wrote:
| These days coach has multiple tiers and they're not
| necessarily in a uniform location. Whereas first class is
| always in the front
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > First Class can keep getting off first, you still get the
| benefits if you apply this to Coach
|
| Domestic flights on single aisle aircrafts, have several
| classes (first, extra, etc.), with different price ranges.
| Even emergency exit seats come with some attached benefits,
| like priority boarding. Good luck telling customers that they
| paid extra for an emergency window seat, but have to wait
| until more than half of the plane have de-boarded to exit.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Good luck telling customers that they paid extra for an
| emergency window seat, but have to wait until more than
| half of the plane have de-boarded to exit.
|
| That's exactly what already happens (at least in Europe),
| you don't get priority to de-board if you bought seats with
| extra leg room on the emergency exits, you have to wait.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| The point here is that someone on a window seat would
| have to wait until most of the passengers have left, even
| if they have paid extra.
| Zetice wrote:
| Why is "people won't listen" a real argument here? They'll
| do what they're told or they'll get banned from flying on
| that airline, and possibly pay up to $25k, as it's a
| violation of 49 U.S.C. SS 46504 to interfere with a member
| of the airline crew.
| camdat wrote:
| Next time you're on a flight, listen for the number of
| people who remove their seatbelts before the seatbelt
| light goes off, after a crew member specifically says not
| to do this
|
| I haven't seen any of them fined 25k. Proportionality
| matters, and getting off the plane as fast as (in your
| mind) possible isn't going to be realistically enforced.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| As a 6' person, if I can't explicitly reserve an exit or
| aisle seat, I am not flying with your company, because I
| prefer to not get thrombosis. And I'm sure as hell not going
| to rely on the willingness of my cofliers to be reasonable
| about letting me queue so that I end up with the seat I need,
| while my partner gets the seat next to me.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I have been on flights where passengers are still finding their
| seats and arguing about overhead baggage locations while the
| plane is on the runway - and now you have the air traffic
| controllers moaning at the pilots (why aren't you taking off! You
| only have a 120 second slot!), the pilots moaning at the cabin
| crew, the cabin crew moaning at that one family who just can't
| decide what order to sit down, and dad of the family moaning at
| the daughter to sit next to her brother and stop complaining.
|
| Ryanair even seems to have a way to communicate this. "cabin
| secure" means everyone is following the rules. "cabin secure,
| kinda" means we're gonna break the rules and hope everyone sits
| down before takeoff.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This is slower than the current system because column 2 can not
| stand up (or prepare to exit) until others have completely
| exited.
|
| Also you cannot exit with the people you sit next too (like your
| toddler who will have to make their own way off?).
|
| And that's assuming anyone actually wants to minimise average
| time. Airlines don't. Neither do most passengers.
| [deleted]
| nsedlet wrote:
| This is great. This is mentioned in the discussion topics section
| ("modeling randomness in gathering belongings"). But I wonder
| what the distribution of baggage-gathering time looks like? I'd
| guess pretty positively skewed, i.e. most people are pretty quick
| but then a few people take a long time or a really long time. The
| speed of the flush stage of a particular wave is capped at the
| slowest person in that wave.
| epups wrote:
| Unfortunately, no solution that relies on this level of
| coordination will ever work. We cannot even get people to not
| block the corridor randomly when boarding or offboarding,
| enforcing a routine like this is not going to happen.
|
| Sorry for being negative, I like that you came up with something
| clever. I've seen some similar attempts to make boarding more
| efficient. I just fly way too frequently and I think the world is
| not ready for this yet.
| ccamrobertson wrote:
| I love this because it's exactly the thing that an enraged
| engineer who is stuck in the last row waiting to get off a plane
| would create -- just a little naive given airline incentives,
| couples, families and the limits of human patience :)
|
| I would much rather if all planes had a second staircase at the
| back, jet bridges aren't needed. That, or let people check
| luggage for free again so they don't need to manhandle carry-ons.
|
| My guess is that airports also prefer a slower release of
| passengers -- it means customs lines and bathrooms aren't
| immediately saturated.
| very_good_man wrote:
| Let's fix all those other flow bottlenecks too :)
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Is there actually a reason we cannot have two jet bridges? I
| have a bias for jet bridges because they generally seem to lead
| straight to the gate whereas at airports that use stairs it
| seems like I typically have to get on some bus (FRA, KEF, LAX)
| first or walk very far (PDX, SEATEC), since stairs are only at
| the furthest out gates.
| gooseyard wrote:
| competitive de-planing would be an amazing sport
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is clever thinking, but we've been running airlines for so
| long now, I can't help but wonder if this has already been tried,
| and if there were issues with it. Potentical obstacles I can
| imagine off the top of my head:
|
| - Will people even obey? What if half the people from the wrong
| side get up too? After a long tiring flight, will that anger
| people on the correct side and lead to fights? Having to show
| your ticket to prove you were in the right column to get off is
| not very customer-friendly
|
| - What about families with children, couples, and groups in
| general? People want to stay together. It doesn't matter if this
| is rational or not, it's what people want to feel safe and not
| anxious
|
| - Is it really even going to make much of a difference? In my
| experience, people are already mostly grabbing their bags
| quickly, simultaneously while the rows immediately ahead are
| starting to exit
|
| And of course, while this can in theory save perhaps a couple
| minutes for domestic passengers with only a carry-on, even in
| theory it saves no time at all for anyone who still has to go
| through a crowded passport control or wait for checked baggage.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Getting off the plane is already fairly quick. Everyone wants
| to get going, usually the plane is empty in 5 minutes or less.
|
| I think it would help with getting onto the plane. Filling the
| plane can easily take 20 minutes - which in a half hour
| turnaround is often the critical path.
|
| The challenge here is you need to get people to enter the plane
| door in a very precise order. Just 10% of people ignoring
| instructions probably eliminates most/all of the benefits.
| Groups who don't want to sit apart _or_ board the plane apart
| have to go either first or last.
| avidiax wrote:
| > The challenge here is you need to get people to enter the
| plane door in a very precise order.
|
| Small amounts of money are often very motivating.
|
| You could, for example, say that anyone can enter or leave
| the plane in any order they like. However, if they do so
| before their turn in the system, they don't get a $10 refund
| on their ticket. If they don't present their ticket, they are
| assumed to have gone early.
|
| The question then, is whether the benefit would remain with
| proportional instead of total compliance, and whether the
| benefit outweighs the costs of enforcement.
| mattnewton wrote:
| My first thought is that there no way the boarding time is
| worth $10 per passenger to the airline, and no way they
| increase the cost $10 and don't lose tickets to other
| people just using aggregate services like google flights
| and picking cheap options
| ajmurmann wrote:
| There have been similar simulations for boarding airplanes. I
| wish I had never heard about them because now I get annoyed
| almost every time I fly.
|
| As with de-boarding most time is wasted/spent by people
| standing in the aisle and waiting for someone who is putting
| their luggage in. The optimal solution has as many passengers
| loading their luggage in the overhead compartment in parallel
| as possible. The ideal way to do this would be that we first
| have passengers with window seats board with one person for
| each row. We should only use every other row to ensure people
| can maneuver. So we'd first board seats NA, N-2A, N-4A, etc.
| down to row 1 with N being the last row. Then NF, N-2F, N-4F
| etc. And then N-1A, N-3A and so on. Then we work our way
| through the middle seats and then aisle seats.
|
| The current approach which commonly boards people starting
| from the front or back FORCES congestion and minimizes
| probability of two people reaching their seat at the same
| time and being able to put up their luggage in parallel.
|
| Even if the approach I describe is broken because groups
| board together, it becomes at worst a random boarding order
| which is still much more efficient than the current nonsense.
|
| The reason we cannot board more efficiently is because it's
| unintuitive, people don't like it and behave like wild
| animals in groups.
| nradov wrote:
| No thanks. As someone who prefers aisle seats I don't want
| to get stuck boarding last to find that the overhead bins
| are already full.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Even if the approach I describe is broken because groups
| board together, it becomes at worst a random boarding order
| which is still much more efficient than the current
| nonsense.
|
| I think it can quickly become worse than random.
|
| Imagine you have the perfect sequence for max parallelism,
| but right in the middle is one 6 person family group who
| are going to take 10 minutes to get seated while they
| arrange toys and stuff for each child, blocking the aisle
| the whole time.
|
| With the perfect sequence, this halts all boarding for
| those 10 mins, since people need to pass the blockage for
| the scheme to work. Whereas with random boarding, there
| will actually be many people who manage to get seated
| during those 10 mins, because there will be a bunch of
| people who, by chance, are seated between the door and the
| blockage and can get to their seats.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Unless the method is reactive, that family would always
| lead to the entire aisle being filled within seconds with
| waiting passengers who need to pass them unless the
| family is very far back in the plane.
| paulmd wrote:
| > Filling the plane can easily take 20 minutes - which in a
| half hour turnaround is often the critical path
|
| can you really reduce it that much, given that the plane
| needs to be refueled, cargo unloaded and reloaded, etc? like
| it may be the case that while it's inconvenient for
| passengers, the airline doesn't really care because it takes
| them a half hour to turn the plane around on the tarmac side
| anyway, so there's no benefit from reducing the _passenger_
| loading time.
| londons_explore wrote:
| passengers are frequently the critical path.
|
| fuel and luggage crews can be _quick_. I 've seen a luggage
| crew unload and reload a plane inside 8 minutes, including
| loading 2 airfreight containers.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Getting people to board in a certain order isn't particularly
| difficult. Southwest does it already, even if they only use
| it to... make sitting in a grounded plane a perk of checking
| in early? I'm actually not sure why they do it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Thing is, you need people to board in a super precise
| order. Just two people swapped around in the line means
| someone can't get to their seat, delaying the whole
| boarding process.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| That still would be much faster though than the current
| approach employed by most airlines which makes it more
| likely to create congestion in the aisle and minimizes
| how many people can load luggage and take their seat in
| parallel.
| 1-more wrote:
| To get overhead luggage space before it fills up, or does
| SW not allow for that?
| nradov wrote:
| Southwest offers free checked bags so there is somewhat
| less demand for overhead bin space.
| jcl wrote:
| I thought Southwest uses "open" seating, where passengers
| aren't assigned a seat, but instead just take any
| unoccupied seat? If so, a perk of being earlier in the
| boarding order would be that you have a better chance of
| getting a seat you want, if you have any particular
| preferences.
| Accujack wrote:
| Exactly. This proposal entirely ignores human nature, and the
| author has obviously not done any research into the problem
| beyond being annoyed while waiting to exit an aircraft.
|
| There's this 2015 article on doing essentially what he/she is
| suggesting: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5877863/it-takes-
| forever-to-get...
|
| There's a paper on solving the problem by assigning passengers
| to seats so that their luggage is evenly spread throughout the
| overhead bins:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096969971...
|
| There's a paper here on other methods tried, including creating
| "pre boarding" areas for passengers:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269466040_Speeding_...
|
| The first step in any scientific endeavor should always be a
| literature search.. see what's been tried, and what worked and
| what didn't.
| [deleted]
| uudecoded wrote:
| This is a fine simulation, and, as described, it does not account
| for overhead baggage handling, and as mentioned in other
| comments: families traveling together.
|
| If you have ever taken a commercial flight, you have seen it: the
| individual that needs two people to team up (or one highly
| capable one) and lift up or down their 40-50 lbs (~20 kg) roller
| from the overhead. Half the time, their help is in their party,
| but it slows things down.
|
| I would estimate that this happens at least once every 4 rows on
| a fully occupied 6 seat wide aircraft.
|
| Given this, forbidding passengers to bring carry ons aboard that
| they can't overhead lift themselves would be the only way to
| speed things up regardless of boarding/deboarding strategy.
|
| Is that practical? Probably not.
| glitcher wrote:
| The problem is that families sit in rows together, not usually in
| columns. And in busy airports it's not very ideal to get split up
| from your travel partners, especially if they are young, old,
| need assistance, etc.
| very_good_man wrote:
| I believe the response to this objection is to just have the
| groups wait for later "flush"es / make "trades" with strangers
| who would otherwise exit in later waves.
| bhaney wrote:
| That's a lot of extra coordination to add to a method that
| already depends on an awful lot of coordination.
| ubj wrote:
| Second this point, especially when flying with young children.
| But I imagine that slight modifications could be made to get a
| hybrid approach.
| btilly wrote:
| This is what I came to say. The proposal is obviously written
| by someone who is single and travels alone.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > Unresolved Issues:
|
| > How to accommodate the elderly, people with children, and
| groups.
|
| Guys, you have to read the article at least. It's stated in
| the "further discussion" section so at least add something
| more than just repeating the topic.
|
| Or, I suppose, rewritten in the vernacular of this site:
|
| "This comment is obviously written by someone who didn't read
| the proposal properly".
| TylerE wrote:
| "This article is obviously written by someone who doesn't
| understand the problem space, or human behavior."
| btilly wrote:
| Your judgement is wrong. I had read that. I retain my
| opinion of the article. They ignore the elderly, families,
| and groups. Which are a large portion of travelers. Plus
| they acknowledge that they are creating passenger
| conflicts, and don't address that.
|
| Coming up with a better proposal than this is trivial. Here
| goes.
|
| During flight, lock the overhead bins. When deplaneing,
| those without overhead luggage go first, from first to last
| row as now. This makes sense because they generally walk
| faster because they have less stuff. Those with overhead
| luggage have to wait for the steward or stewardess to
| unlock the overhead bins following the fast group, and then
| exit from last row to first. Therefore those who are slow
| to get things out of bins, do not slow others. Those
| needing assistance wait until the very end, as now.
|
| Getting stuff out of bins is the gating factor here. And so
| there is no passenger conflict about the fast people
| leaving first, because the others are waiting on the bins
| being unlocked, then for people behind them to pass. And
| groups get to leave together.
|
| There you go. A faster approach than now. With fewer
| problems.
| very_good_man wrote:
| While I reject your condescending tone, locking the
| overheads is possibly a good idea but requires major
| equipment upgrades.
|
| I do not believe locking mechanisms in the overhead
| compartments are currently installed.
|
| Controls to instantly lock/unlock such systems remotely
| by one attendant, thousands of times, reliably, is yet
| another challenge. Better to engineer a solution that
| requires no new equipment.
| btilly wrote:
| When I compare tones, mine seems far less condescending
| than the person I was responding to.
|
| Engineering a solution that creates passenger conflict is
| not a good idea. I'd rather wait for slow people, than be
| around a loud argument at the end of a flight. I get
| enough stress already from hours of being cramped on a
| flight, I don't want more.
|
| Also you are adding entirely unnecessary requirements to
| my solution. There is no need for the unlocking to be
| instant. Just to be doable one by one by someone going
| around the pace of people dragging luggage. The
| technology used for security tags in clothing stores
| would be more than adequate.
|
| That said, I'm not seriously advocating for my solution.
| I'm just saying that it takes no more than 30 seconds to
| come up with something better than the one the blog post
| was about.
| frereubu wrote:
| Seems great in princinple, but I'm not sure this would work when
| coming up against human behaviour. It's as much as the stewards
| can do to stop some people charging down the aisle the minute the
| plane comes to a standstill, let alone communicating something
| this nuanced to everyone so they understand.
|
| It also means that families who are travelling together would
| need to deplane separately, which can screw up things in terms of
| helping each other with bags, and also wouldn't work with
| families who have multiple kids of an age where they need to walk
| with their parents. It feels like the kind of fragile system
| where you'd end up with so many exceptions that it becomes
| potentially even more messy as you'd need to communicate those
| exceptions and people would need to understand them.
| netsharc wrote:
| That's probably why OP said it's open for discussion. But yeah
| herding (isn't the correct term flight attendants and not
| stewards?) the passengers would be difficult.
|
| Perhaps the procedure should be, if everyone in your group is
| holding all their belongings - either in the aisle or standing
| in the footspace of an aisle seat (so rows C and D in a 3-3
| configuration), then they can join the deplaning wave. But if
| you're standing in the aisle but one from your group is still
| crouched in a window seat and will need to grab their bag, and
| you don't want to abandon them, then you don't occupy the aisle
| go back to your (presumably aisle-) seat and wait for the next
| wave/go into an empty row so the crouched passenger can stand
| in row C/D, and wait for the wave to finish so they can grab
| their bag.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Every once in a while these ideas for quicker, more efficient
| boarding of commercial passenger flights come around, and every
| time I look at them and think how well they work if you assume
| the passengers are perfectly spherical cattle.
| nradov wrote:
| What's the point? I'm going to have to wait for my checked bags
| anyway. Passengers who really care about deplaning quickly should
| just select seats near the front.
| very_good_man wrote:
| I have calculated this would save between 50 and 150 human
| life-equivalents of time per year. You can see this calculation
| if you scroll to the bottom of the simulation page.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Sure, but it doesn't add up to much _useful_ time per
| person... Aggregate time saving across large numbers of
| people just seems like a fairly useless measure in general.
| To take it to an extreme, if you saved ten seconds in
| something everybody in the world does once or twice, you'd
| have saved a very large number of person years in aggregate
| but made basically no meaningful improvement to any
| individual's life...
| netsharc wrote:
| For the airline, quicker deplaning means quicker turnaround, or
| a chance to give the plane a better clean-up before the next
| load of passenger shows up.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I almost never check a bag, everything I need fits in a ~35L
| duffel bag and 20L backpack. If I need prohibited or oversized
| tools or toys I ship it to my destination by UPS.
|
| I also end up near the back of the plane all the time, because
| those are the available seats that don't have a higher price
| tag.
|
| The delay is just a waste, but unfortunately the airlines
| aren't incentivized to make boarding or deplaning quick,
| they're trying to upcharge for more expensive seats. All the
| engineers are sitting at the gate for 15 minutes wondering why
| everyone's in a rush and paying extra to get "priority
| boarding" onto a cramped plane, then at the end of the flight,
| they're sitting in the back of the plane wondering why it takes
| 15 minutes for everyone to get off the plane, and how this
| wasteful process could be made more efficient.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'd think airlines would really want to put pax at the front
| that have tight connections (before or after). Unsure if any
| think this far ahead though.
|
| But I also think they should put healthy 25 year olds in the
| emergency exit row for... emergencies, but they'd rather sell
| those seats to someone that's often the poorest candidate to
| execute in an emergency.
| parchley wrote:
| You don't know that up front, e.g. if your plane is late and
| you need to hurry to a connecting flight.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Many people don't check baggage at all. This avoids extra fees,
| avoids waiting for checked baggage, and eliminates the
| possibility of lost baggage (assuming they don't make you gate
| check your carry on).
| aacid wrote:
| not everyone have checked bags. we only check our bags when
| going on long vacations, on majority of our flights we have
| only small bags.
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