Why don’t airlines board planes starting with the back rows then move forward?
In: Engineering
They did a lot of studies on this. Because how fast they can board a plane actually has a big impact on how quickly they can leave which increases revenue. The problem with back to front is that people take time to put their luggage up top and get themselves situated before they sit down. Meanwhile someone who is further towards the front of the plane could be doing the same thing at the same time, but they’re not on the plane yet now. They also tried outside inside assuming that this would keep people from having to get up to let someone else into the window seat, but it equally slowed things down. Basically the most efficient method is to stagger people that are more towards the back with people that are more towards the front in a variable pattern that essentially looks like random. So they eventually figured out that random is really the best way to do it.
Some airplanes will board the front and the back at the same time in which case you obviously only board if you’re in the back half of the front half of the plane. (Like they have a stairway in the back and the gate bridge on the front).
This is why they have boarding zones the way they have it. You could have special status that gives you earlier boarding, but you probably still got stuck with a seat near the back of the plane or whatever. it lets them give out the incentive of early boarding as a paid add on or a perk for miles/credit card, and it actually helps promote random boarding.
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