Best Order to Board an Airplane?

Factual Questions
1

Here’s something I don’t understand. Why do airlines board passengers from the front to the rear? I think it would be vastly more
efficient and convenient to board from the rear to the front.

For this thread I’ll ignore First Class, disabled people, & other “Priority” seating.

Let’s say that there are 30 rows in the Main Cabin. Under the current system, Group 1 consists of rows 1-10, Group 2 consists of rows 11-20, & Group 3 consists of rows 21-30.

First, Group 1 boards the plane.
While they are all standing in the aisle stowing their carry-on luggage in the overhead bins, Group 2 begins boarding. To get to their seats, they have wiggle through the Group 1 passengers blocking the aisle. Finally, Group 3 boards. In order to get to THEIR seats, they have to zigzag through Groups 1 & 2 like a Heisman Trophy winner.

What a mess!

Under my proposed system,
Group 1 consists of rows 21-30, Group 2 still consists of rows 11-20, but Group 3 consists of rows 1-10.

First Group 1 boards. While they are all standing in the aisle stowing their carry-on luggage in the overhead bins, Group 2 begins boarding. However, they are not blocked by Group 1. Finally, Group 3 boards.
Like Group 2, they are not blocked by either previous group.

I believe my way would be much better.

Am I not getting something? Flight Attendants? UX Engineers? Queueing Theory SMEs? Crowd Control Facilitators? Somebody? Anybody? Please weigh in & tell me what I’ve overlooked.

PS: This is the first time I’ve started a Thread. Is this the right Category?

2

IIRC, the last time I flew Southwest, that was how they did it. But that might be because

Airlines love to make many, many different levels of “priority”, because it lets them maximize profit by selling every seat for the highest price they can get for it. And I think that most boarding zones end up being based on some “priority” category or another.

3

No you didn’t, because Southwest doesn’t have assigned seating.

4

And when the airlines do follow a procedure like this, compliance is voluntary. It takes just a couple of "“rules? I don’t follow no stinkin’ rules!” types to jam the whole system. And we’re not allowed to push them out the airlock once we’re in orbit, so they reproduce.

5

SW assigns you a boarding group at checkin.
Find your group get in line get on the plane. Pick any available seat.

Last time I flew SW was 2018

6

Here is the CEO of American Airlines explaining why back to front boarding doesn’t work:

“We have looked at that, we’ve studied it, and while it may seem better to have people go from back to front …what you really want to do is window-to-aisle but if you do that you split up families and things.”

“When you do back-to-front there is just as much if not even more in some cases interaction with customers getting up and out of the aisle as there is with our process.”

Hope that’s crystal clear. :crazy_face:

I think the best order to board an airplane is as follows:

“Git on the plane! Stow your shit! Sit down!!!”

7

QI (“Quite Interesting” a British panel comedy show which (supposedly, at least) deals in facts and research), answered this question (video below). Based on research, the most efficient way is to load the odd-numbered window seats, then the even-numbered window seats, then the middle seats in the same order, then the aisle seats in the same order. But since this is complex and difficult to administer, second choice for efficiency is random, or allowing everyone (perhaps after those that do genuinely require pre-boarding) to board at will. So sayeth QI. The Most Efficient Way To Board A Plane | QI - YouTube

8

Boarding aeroplanes is a classic example of Queue Theory.

You can have the most effective method suggested by the Steffen Boarding Method which is very efficient but requires an essentially perfectly ordered queue of “standard” passengers to work. It just moves the point of interruption inside the terminal. This is actually safer but passengers find queueing in the terminal more of an irritation than queuing onboard.

If you allow passengers to be people and do what they think best suits them then inefficiencies result. There are those who rush on, those who lag and those who queue and grumble. The highly efficient mathematical models break down when faced the reality of the passenger list eg a frail passenger with a large carry on, or a family with young kids, or passengers who go past their allotted seat and need to go back against the flow.

A fair proportion of passengers have a ruse/routine which they think allows them to get on and off the plane faster than their peers which might work provided everybody else plays by the rules.

9

If it wasn’t for the limited overhead space for carry-ons, I’d just as soon be the last passenger to board.

10

I check my luggage. Therefore I will wait to board at the end of the line. :monkey:

Once as last boarding my aisle seat was occupied and the two old farts insisted I take the window. And he had an excuse to stealing my seat, yeah Joe were all connecting. I did take the window. but got up mid flight on purpose fuck your knees Joe. Move over Mary.

11

Thanks to everyone for their responses. I should have done some research before starting this thread. I looked now & found many articles analyzing this topic.

Many of these articles say that Rear-to-Front (which I proposed) is the most common method. I usually fly American & they always board Front-to-Rear. Not one article mentioned or analyzed this method.

Is American really such an outlier?

So I’m gonna hijack my own thread & change the question.

Which airline do you usually fly? Which order do they board: Front-to-Rear, Rear-to-Front, or something else? Again, please ignore any Prioritization.

12

Mythbusters tested various ways, and this is what they came up with too. I’m not sure they did the windows, middles, aisles version, but I know they landed on free-for-all as the most efficient (at least of the practical options).

13

CGP Grey has a good video.
“The Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use - YouTube”

14

The problem is simple. People are selfish idjits.

Ignoring all issues about priority high priced customers vs low priority cheapo customers and all issues of first class versus coach the problem breaks down like this.

If we board back to front the first people getting on stow their luggage in the first bins then walk empty handed to the back & sit down. The next few people use the bins just aft of the front then walk empty handed to their seats just forward of the very back. Lather rinse repeat and everything goes smoothly & quickly …

Until the plane is half full. Then the shit hits the fan.

Then the next person gets on, and every bin forward of their seat is full. So they have to take their luggage aft of their seat, put it in a bin, then walk forward to their seat. Meanwhile as soon as they’re walking forward they’re colliding with the folks going farther aft to place their luggage next.

By the time you’re loading the first row(s) of passengers they have to walk to the very ass end of the plane to find an open bin, stow their luggage, then walk forward against the flow of traffic to the front row(s) to sit down.

And once luggage is distributed as I’ve described deboarding is an equivalent ClusterF***, but at least now everyone is in a hurry and extra courteous & public-spirited towards their fellow passengers. Not.


If everyone could be forced to put their luggage only directly above their own seating row, this problem would disappear and the OP’s idea would be correctly the best way to board most efficiently, once you accept the need to have clusters like families sitting together board as a group.

The problem is that the public won’t do it. So we board from front to back so the front-sitting people can fill the front luggage bins. That prevents the back-sitting people from taking them and forces the back-sitting people to use the back-end bins. Which is all about preventing the necessity for two-way traffic, with suitcases, in the one very narrow aisle.

And even then the small amount of priority passenger boarding that goes in before the purely front-to-back boarding groups produces some people sitting well aft who stow their bags up front. Which of course forces somebody else later to do the opposite.

Your fellow humans: that’s why you can’t have nice things.

The CEO upthread was mumbling useless all-but-incomprehensible platitudes because he could not come out and say “Most of you people are selfish pigs and we need to protect you from each other’s selfishness or we’d never get the damn planes loaded.”

15

Assuming we have the Penguin onboard every airplane overcoming LSLGuy’s very valid issue; you still have another issue. You’re proposing changing to LIFO loading from the current FIFO loading; the earlier I get on the more time I need to be in an undersized tin can (I can neither sit nor stand comfortably in a window seat) & the greater likelihood that I’ll miss my connecting flight. No one would want to be first & everyone would want to be last on.

16

While we’re at it, when de-boarding at the destination, lets let all the people who have flight connections off first. I am sure nobody would mind that. Right?

17

Airliners should be like a ride at Disneyland. The whole side flips up and passengers board directly into their aisle.

18

I’ll be happy to do that, as soon as the airlines stop penalizing people for making use of the efficient systems designed for dealing with luggage.

19

When I flew back from Chicago two weeks ago, my seat was in the 11th row and I was assigned to boarding group 4, but I was told that if I checked my carryon at the gate I could board in group 2.

I’m not convinced there’s any sort of logic to the process.

20

I’d like a hard rule: no carry-ons except what can fit under the seat in front of you.

Quicker boarding and nothing flying out of compartments in turbulence.

Of course we’d need some adjustment on how much luggage you could check to allow for your former carry-on stuff.