Currently standing in terminal and the question arises, wouldn’t it make sense to load the back first? It seems inefficient to me waiting for everyone in the rows ahead to get seated when we could do it the other way around. I’m sure there’s a reason, but am genuinely curious. Thoughts?
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They often do load economy class back to front. But the very front of the plane is typically business class, and they pay more for the privilege of boarding first and disembarking first.
Cargo is already being loaded back to front, adding passengers to the mix might cause the plane to tip on it’s tail.
There are absolutely more efficient ways to load an airplane besides the common current practices.
But there are other considerations; namely getting higher paying customers on first. Whether that is boarding first class so they can be served a drink or passengers who pay more so they can get overhead bin space.
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airplanes are typically not boarded front to back.
the only exception are business and first class which are typically boarding first but except for this its either random or airlines have boarding groups which are usually back to front.
the problem is nobody gives a crap about boarding groups so it usually ends up being random anyways.
Airplane boarding efficiency has been studied, and TLDR: most of your perceived inefficiency is perception bias.
As long as boarding is a single file system with passengers taking between 0 and 15 seconds to sit down (aka stow carry-ons), that 0 to 15 second will hold up the entire line no matter what order they get on. Back to front? 15 seconds at the back will hold up the people at second to back just the same. Front to back? Every 15 second delay holds up the entire plane.
[Here’s a simple article](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30549336/math-boarding-plane/) about the findings. Basically, unless you know who will take a long time and who will take a short time, random seating is the best option.
There is a fastest method, but it requires assigned seating and cooperative passengers with mildly complex instructions. [Here’s an article](https://www.wired.com/story/study-confirms-how-to-optimize-airplane-boarding/) that includes some info on it. Basically, it combines back-to-front boarding with alternating-sides with alternating-rows to effectively have an entire line on the plan and stowing at once, before letting the next line on. It’s sometimes known as the ‘Steffan method’ after the guy that published it (in 2011). It isn’t used because it’s complex (with 6 seats a row it requires splitting into 12 groups and then lining up in correct order).
Edit disclaimer: This analysis is mostly from reading the articles. My personal experience lately has been on a no-assigned-seat airline and 50%-70% capacity flights, which is just entirely different from most people complaining here. Different airlines and different planes and different passengers will have different effective results. But the “single line, carry-on over head” situation and “why don’t we try boarding a different way?” is a question that has been asked frequently enough and for long enough that Steffan wrote that big paper more than a decade ago.
every plane ive been on has got doors at both front and back, and if your seat is in the front half of the plane, you go in the front door, if your seat is in the back half of the plane you board in the back door.
simple.
Because if you load from the back, passengers in the rear of the plane often will put their carry-on luggage in overhead bins further forward in the plane. This is so they can grab them as they walk by on the way out of the plane rather than wait for the passengers around them to get their bags. The end result of this, however, is that overhead bin space is then filled before the passengers seated further forward in economy board the plane, leaving nowhere for them to put their carry-on luggage.
And it would be even more efficient to board back to front all window seats, then middle, then aisle. But for reasons already stated and the simple fact a lot of people are just dumb and/or assholes who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand this ruins it for everyone..
I was flying back from Prague to Belgium recently and when unboarding everybody up front got off first, and the people in the back got off last and slowly.
At some point the staff barred us from leaving the plane when up front, because we had to counter the weight of the people on the back. If we’d all walked off with a good number of people still in the rear of the plane, apparently the plane could’ve tipped backwards on its tail.
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