The Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use

I feel like he wrote this script while waiting to board a plane.

"The human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking". That aged well.

Having worked in aviation for years (cabin crew for many) I can’t even begin to explain how badly normal people who ordinarily excel in everyday life seem to completely loose all sense of intelligence the moment the enter an airport.

If you wanted the slowest possible method of boarding, front to back seems decent enough, but doing the Steffen method in reverse seems ideal. Front to back, don't alternate, seated from the aisles out to the window. Maximises seat shuffling, minimises pullaways and parallels. Call it the Steffen Corrupted.

How bad was ur flight man

"The human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking."

As an airline pilot let me give you my 2 cents. Passengers don't slow down loading, cargo baggage does. The time it takes to get people's bags under the aircraft takes forever. The passenger will actually board before their bag goes through all the extra security on it's way to the plane.

As an airline pilot, I can say that the turnaround time is not normally limited by passenger boarding or deplaning. The refueling and cargo/bag loading take longer and limit the time. My opinion is that fewer rules to follow will give customers less to worry about.

“You cant just open the boarding gate and let everyone flock in like cattle” UK: watch

Passengers: "BUT I WANNA GET ON THE PLANE NOW!" Crew: "the only difference is you're gonna sit in a plane instead of sitting in an airport. The plane leaves when it's ready, not when you are."

You forgot to factor in the limited overhead storage that the rear passengers use in the front as they pass by. Thereby making front passengers look for space further in and then have to swim back upstream against the traffic flow to get to their seat.

Shout out to the guys who only bring 1 bag and literally sit in their seat and then slide the backpack under their seat. You are Steffen Perfect

“to achieve this ballet, there are no boarding groups…” magnificent

Actually, the first encounter I ever had with boarding groups was on a flight to the US. All flights I have had before, mainly in Europe, were what you describe as: "Hey guys, plane's ready."

When boarding a domestic flight in Australia, as you enter the aerobridge, there is a sign which directs rows 1-15 to continue along the aerobridge and board the aircraft through the front door, and rows 15+ to walk down the stairs out onto the apron and board using the rear stairs, filling the plane from both ends.

i just went on a flight recently and they said: “boarding groups 1-4, 5, 6, everyone get on” and it was the fastest i’ve ever gotten on a plane and it made me think of this haha

Have the flight attendant crack a whip every time someone takes more than 5 seconds putting in their luggage

There is actually an interesting boarding method that the military uses when they do mass transportation of soldiers that is potentially more efficent then Steffan Perfect. When the US Military deploys entire batallions or brigades of troops from one continent to another, they do so by chartering entire 777 or other dreamliner class trans-oceanic flights. The method is back to front, every second isle, but with a twist. You load back to front, no choice of which seat, and you do not stowe your bag immediatly. You sit down in the seat with your bag in your lap and wait. Once the row has filled and the row in front has filled, all bags are passed to the isle seat, who shoves them all into the overhead bins one by one for the entire row. While you are sitting down with your bag in your lap, you have a couple moments to pull out whatever items you will immediatly need and prep your bag to be stowed. I do not know if the method has a specific name, but I experienced it on three separate occations going to or from deployments. This seating method basicly reduces all stopages from stowing bags and from seat shuffling to nearly zero. This however would basicaly never work for a civillian flight for many reasons. People traveling together and trust being the major issues. General travelers will likely not trust in handing their bag of personal belongings to a random stranger to have them stuff it into the overhead, and the random isle-seat passenger will probably not be willing to do the extra work of putting 5-7 bags into he overhead one after another. (As I said, trans-pacific flights, where it's two isles and 7-8 seats in the middle row and 4-5 in each side row, and sometimes even an upstairs and downstairs.) People traveling in groups would want to all sit together, and this seating method has basicly zero promise that they will even be in the same row, as by the time they get to their seats, the group might be split between two entirly different sections. So while this seating method is highly efficent, it can basicly only occur when every single person involved is on the same page, knows the plan, and is basicly ordered 'this is how this is going to happen so just shut up and do it because it's not up for debate' Edit : It's also one of the only times when every single person on the plane has at least one firearm, but they have all taken the bolt out and put it in their pocket, and nobody has any ammo.

Can I volunteer an idea to help with human’s inability to follow instructions ? It’s the fact that when people don’t know you’re breaking a rule, it’s much easier to break it. An example is people boarding the plane although it’s not their group’s turn. In comparison, when plane staff calls people group by group to UNBOARD the plane (row 1 to 15, 15 to 30 and so on), people tend to follow that rule much more, otherwise it’s OBVIOUS they’re braking it and are trying to take advantage of the system and go past people they were not meant to. SO an idea would be to make rule breaking obvious from the start, for example by printing boarding passes of different colors, and calling them out by colors (« we now invite passengers with a RED ticket to board the plane »). This would draw attention to the ticket’s color which is obvious to everyone, and people couldn’t hope that the front desk staff will « not notice » that they’re from another group. In my mind, it works !

I was on a flight a few months ago and they had a different method where the plane had a door at the front and one at the rear. So it went front to middle and back to middle simultaneously. Seemed like a smart idea, except for the fact that you inevitably got people near the back who entered from the front, or vice versa, and all of a sudden you had an even larger traffic jam than before, since now both lines were getting stopped by whatever random person didn't enter from the correct door and was trying to move against the flow...