Every time I fly I see the same problem. Planes are boarded front-to-back. You always get a “traffic jam” of passengers stowing their gear and waiting for others to sit down and get out of the way.
If they boarded staring from the rear, this should be mitigated to a large extent.
This seems common sense. Why don’t they do it? There must be a reason.
They could board first and business class and then reverse board.
Every time I accidentally fly Southwest, I'm horrified at how bad the boarding system is. People plop down wherever leaving one-seat holes so you can't sit with your partner.
It also guarantees more seat trading than an assigned system because most people in the assigned system have seats they wanted. People on Southwest flights are always haggling so they can sit with their partner. I almost never see seat trading on other flights.
My mind is blown. But then again every time I take a Southwest flight, I'm wondering "who tf is this for?" and I've finally found my guy.
Most airlines’ boarding strategies are terrible, but getting rid of assigned seats would objectively make my flight experience more chaotic.
And because corralling children (even teenage children!) is much harder than just getting up and walking on yourself, this results in families almost invariably having to either accept being spread across separate seats in multiple rows, or being pushy about trading seats with exactly the kinds of people who have aggressively made sure they get there first.
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I'd also add, I've seen some more sophisticated theoretical boarding strategies, but passengers have trouble even understanding zones, there's no chance of boarding alternate rows or whatever working in practice.
>Loading back to front just moves the line inside the plane, but is not significantly faster than loading from the front to the back.[2]
[1]: https://thepointsguy.com/news/back-to-front-boarding-coronav...
[2]: https://thepointsguy.com/2012/10/travel-science-improving-ai...
https://www.economist.com/gulliver/2016/05/11/resentment-of-...
I remember boarding a Virgin flight in Australia in 2019 and they boarded from both ends of the plane. I thought that was the most efficient way.
Boarding last when you’re in the back is no fun because you’re squeezing past everyone who’s trying to get their carry-on situated, but boarding last in the front seems like a luxury.
Overhead bin space does make sense for why people in economy want to board first. But first/business class typically have their own bins, so why do they want to board first?
It makes more sense when thinking of the deboarding logistics to go front to back to ensure those sitting in the front will have overhead space at their seat as intended.
Basically people ruined it.
Seems simple if one cares to admit it: Status.
No judgment here, even though we were in fact in the last category of seven. Not needing extra time for kids/elderly, not premier, not business, not military, not strata du jour...so yes, our category boarded from the back to front! Sort of... :-)
For bonus points, they have to police the size of carry ons to make sure no one sneaks on to the plane with something that won’t fit under their seat.
Of course, their website obfuscates these terrible policies, so then you get to watch a line of people that look like they want to scream at the poor boarding agents.
I'm always gobsmacked at the obvious class divide during boarding, and the efforts they go to in order to maintain it. The HUGE signs that "PREMIUM" are over here, and everyone else is over there. I also really like those barriers and retractable ropes/fences they put up, and how they try exceptionally hard to stop me sitting remotely close to the 'Premium' boarding area, even just to read a book.
I don't do anything else much in big public gatherings (public transport, sporting events, live music), so I think it's particularly jarring for me.
Think it through. You've just been charged an extra $500 to sit in a chair for four hours, and you're waiting in line behind a mother with five screaming children? You've got very important business things to attend to! Or whatever!
IDK if you ever watched _Veep_ but there's this marvellous episode where a megadonor is complaining that he didn't get more chicken than the $100-plate crowd at a fundraiser. He was literally counting (let's generously say) $5 chicken breasts.
Never mind that he was a hominid of roughly the same proportion as everyone else in the room; did not metabolize food any faster or differently; and certainly couldn't care less about $5.
So: like that, but for air travel.
And this is why I usually wait towards the end of boarding to get on the plane no matter where I'm sitting.
As is commonly the case when one looks at a giant industry and says "I could do this way better having thought about it for 30 seconds" this is a far more difficult problem to optimize than it appears on first glance.
My favorite half-baked + stupid + fun one: Install the plane seating area at the gate itself, as a separate detached entity on a conveyor belt. Passengers can take their time, it's open, there aren't walls. You can just walk right into Row 20, seat A. No squeezing down aisles. Once everyone arrives and takes their seat, the belt moves and shuttles the seats+passengers into the fuselage. Kinda like a mini-roller coaster. Shut doors. Take off. Repeat in reverse after landing.
(There are obviously serious problems with this. You'd have to redesign planes and gates, at a minimum.)