When you think of all the ways an astrophysicist might make life easier, you probably think of things like cold fusion and extraterrestrial colonization. But Jason Steffen, a postdoctoral fellow at <="" a="">Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics, has more earthly aims. He wants to make getting on an airplane less of a hassle.
His idea: Have 10 passengers at a time board in alternating rows. He says it's at least four times faster than what most airlines are doing because it lets everyone stow their luggage and take their seats without getting in one another's way. People get seated sooner, which means planes take off sooner. And that means it will get a lot of attention from the airlines — planes only make money when they're in the air, as they are able to take off and land more flights on a given day.
"It's no secret that efficiency, productivity and high utilization are keys to any successful airline," said Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 airlines. "There will be many airlines and operational people interested in reading his study."
An airliner typically spends 30 to 60 minutes or more on the ground, and airline executives spend a lot of time thinking about boarding efficiency because it's the best way to reduce that wasted time. A 1998 Boeing study found that the boarding rate has fallen more than 50 percent since 1970 to as little as nine people per minute.
Steffen was boarding a flight out of Seattle at about that pace a few years ago. As he crept down the jetway, he wondered why getting on a plane takes so damn long. He mulled it over for 18 months and finally resolved to solve the problem or quit obsessing over it. He wrote a program using C++ and a sampling algorithm to model boarding behavior and started crunching numbers. His results will appear in the Journal of Air Transport Management, which isn't high on Steffen's reading list, but is popular with airline bosses.
Modeling and common sense said filling a plane from front to back is the worst way to go because everyone's waiting for the people in front of them to sit down. That's why most airlines fill planes from back to front. But Steffen was surprised to find that such a method doesn't save much time. It fills the plane in a hurry, but no one's got room to stash their stuff. You spend 15 minutes standing in the aisle while the woman in 17A fumbles through her backpack for her headphones, the guy in 22D struggles to get his suitcase into the overhead bin and the kids in row 14 argue over the window seat. That's why it takes 25 minutes or more to fill a plane. Give people enough room to get their bags stashed and you really speed things up.
So how much room do people need? Steffen's simulations found that boarding is most efficient when you give them two rows of space to stash their stuff. On a plane with 20 rows, that means having no more than 10 people boarding simultaneously (a 40-row plane can handle 20 people), filling every other row down one side of the plane — 1A, 3A, 5A and so on — then the other. Try to get any more than that aboard and things start slowing down quickly.
"The most people I modeled was 240 people," Steffen said, "and it was eight times faster than boarding from front to back and four to five times faster than back to front."
That may be, but not everyone will want to hopscotch down the plane. People traveling together usually sit together and want to board together, and an airline's not going to risk ticking off customers no matter how much time it might save. No problem, Steffen said. Fill the even-numbered rows first, alternating from the left side of the plane to the right. Repeat the process for the odd-numbered rows.
"It's twice as slow as the optimal method," he said, "but it's twice as fast as the back-to-front method."
Steffen is undoubtedly the first astrophysicist to study boarding efficiency, but US Airways and other airlines have made a science out of it. They've developed boarding schemes with names like "rotating zone" and "reverse pyramid," often with good results. But Steffen says his idea is two to three times faster than even these less conventional methods. (US Airways officials could not be reached for comment.)
Lott isn't so sure. The fastest way to fill a puddle-jumper with 19 seats may not work on a jumbo jet with room for 550, and even the best algorithms can't simulate the behavior of several dozen hurried passengers struggling with suitcases, laptops, backpacks and kids.
"That said," he added, "any airline that is continually trying to be more efficient would be open to proposals, whether they're from inside the industry or outside the industry."
Steffen is ready to show the industry what he's found, and eager to do some real-world testing. But no one in the industry has called.
He isn't surprised. "When they come across a problem," he said, "I don't think their first thought is, Let's go talk to an astrophysicist. Oh look — here's one that's studied extra-solar planets. He's our guy!"
Airlines have used computer modeling to find the most efficient way to board passengers, developing the various methods shown above. While they speed things up a little, Jason Steffen says his method is at least four times faster than what most airlines are doing now.
