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Ask HN: Why aren’t planes boarded back-to-front?
24 points by robomartin on April 16, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 97 comments
Every time I fly I see the same problem. Planes are boarded front-to-back. You always get a “traffic jam” of passengers stowing their gear and waiting for others to sit down and get out of the way.

If they boarded staring from the rear, this should be mitigated to a large extent.

This seems common sense. Why don’t they do it? There must be a reason.

They could board first and business class and then reverse board.




You might like this CGP Grey video that explains it pretty well: The Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo


Mythbusters also covered it some time ago.


Associated mythbusters video (clip, so leaves out some details)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss1S3-Kv6R8


I was disappointed that he held onto the assumption that everybody needs an assigned seat. Southwest has boarding groups, but not assigned seats. This feels vastly superior because once a person finds a seat they want to stay in it, as opposed to disrupting the incoming stream by trying to trade seats to be closer to traveling companions etc.


I'm actually amazed to hear someone say this. Maybe you only travel alone, like middle seats, and are always first to board?

Every time I accidentally fly Southwest, I'm horrified at how bad the boarding system is. People plop down wherever leaving one-seat holes so you can't sit with your partner.

It also guarantees more seat trading than an assigned system because most people in the assigned system have seats they wanted. People on Southwest flights are always haggling so they can sit with their partner. I almost never see seat trading on other flights.

My mind is blown. But then again every time I take a Southwest flight, I'm wondering "who tf is this for?" and I've finally found my guy.


Online check in 24 hours ahead of departure got me a good boarding number, so most aisle (and window) seats would be open. And the times I was flying with someone, one of us would take the middle seat.

The times I didn't check in early could suck, but I was pretty good at spotting couples that had split aisle-window (leaving the middle seat empty), and then calling their bluff.

But it's been several years since I've flown, and I'm sure all carriers have since innovated new ways of making the experience worse, while charging for the privilege of mitigating it.


It’s for people that don’t mind

You can still pay more for earlier boarding - families with young children board first

Other airlines will gladly assign you a seat for a price


I feel like you’re vastly overestimating the percentage of passengers who trade seats.

Most airlines’ boarding strategies are terrible, but getting rid of assigned seats would objectively make my flight experience more chaotic.


This inevitably results in window and aisle seats being filled quickly, and nothing remaining (within that section) but middle seats.

And because corralling children (even teenage children!) is much harder than just getting up and walking on yourself, this results in families almost invariably having to either accept being spread across separate seats in multiple rows, or being pushy about trading seats with exactly the kinds of people who have aggressively made sure they get there first.


As a formerly very frequent traveler, not having an assigned seat sounds completely awful to me. Not that I've had much reason to use Southwest since I lived in the South, it's unlikely I would ever fly them barring unusual circumstances for that reason.


The problem with southwest is people tend to board from the front to the back.


You're right about that, because if you go too far back and find out there are no seats that you want, you will have an awfully hard time moving towards the front. So when you see a seat that you find acceptable, you want to lock it in.

Still it would have been nice to see a comparison of the times between non-assigned front-to-back boarding and traditional assigned boarding. But I can imagine that's not so amenable to simulation.


Airlines started charging for checked bags so everyone started bringing massive carry-on bags. If you board last, there is no room for your bag. So it's a "perk" to get on first as an economy passenger. Boarding order for economy is usually 1. Frequent fliers with status giving them priority boarding, who also get to choose their seat and pick as close to the front as they can, 2. Back to front in "zones".

I'd also add, I've seen some more sophisticated theoretical boarding strategies, but passengers have trouble even understanding zones, there's no chance of boarding alternate rows or whatever working in practice.


United and Delta tried during the pandemic to improve social distancing [1] but switched back once travel came back, and I'm guessing this kind of boarding ended up being slower. It turns out the Southwest way (random boarding) was still the fastest.

>Loading back to front just moves the line inside the plane, but is not significantly faster than loading from the front to the back.[2]

[1]: https://thepointsguy.com/news/back-to-front-boarding-coronav...

[2]: https://thepointsguy.com/2012/10/travel-science-improving-ai...


I find SWA the fastest boarding but after boarding is complete there is a 5-10 minute delay from the gate agents delivering documentation to the pilots, as opposed to airlines like Delta where boarding absolutely takes longer but once boarding is complete, the plane quickly leaves the gate. In the end it feels like they take the same amount of time.


To avoid a line forming in the plane, they should board by column, even rows then odd rows. A Odd. E Even. B Odd. D Even. C. D Odd. B Even. E Odd. A Even. People and family together can board together, only if their towards the window counterpart has been called.


Random is mostly the fastest. But I find think southwest is exactly random. As most people tend to sit in the first seats, so southwest turns into a front to back boarding. One thing nice about southwest is orderly lines.


Taking a guess that it's a sales tactic. Everyone has to walk past first class, where they're already being served food and beverages in their luxury sized seats. Then past business class. Then to your peasant seat.


That's interesting because studies have shown that passengers that have to walk to first class are primed for air rage, and resentment.

https://www.economist.com/gulliver/2016/05/11/resentment-of-...

I remember boarding a Virgin flight in Australia in 2019 and they boarded from both ends of the plane. I thought that was the most efficient way.


More to the point, the people paying more (or with status) want to get settled in first, get their carry-ons stowed while there's plenty of room, and not be standing around any longer than they have to. It's not just business vs. economy. On a lot of carriers, some economy gets boarded earlier, may have more leg room, and won't have trouble getting overhead bin space. (And they can deboard faster--and probably don't have checked luggage so they can get out of the airport faster.)


I think this is right (people clearly desire early boarding), but I don’t personally understand it. Being crammed in an airplane isn’t the best—why do people want to do it for extra time (and while sitting on the ground, without the beautiful views from above)?

Boarding last when you’re in the back is no fun because you’re squeezing past everyone who’s trying to get their carry-on situated, but boarding last in the front seems like a luxury.

Overhead bin space does make sense for why people in economy want to board first. But first/business class typically have their own bins, so why do they want to board first?


I’m a big dude and need the larger seat to fly. I pay for first class and if I’m late to board, I usually don’t have a spot for my bag in the bin above my seat. People in coach put their stuff up front so they can book it off the plane faster and I end up having my bag gate checked. It’s really annoying to pay that much and still not have a spot for my bag.


This is a complete mystery to me. If you pay for first class, you should be guaranteed overhead bin space. If there’s no room, someone’s economy bag should get bumped into the cargo hold.


One never seen first class not have room in the bins. If this is the case, get the flight attendants involved. First class bins are supposed to be for first class only. And yes I've seen flight attendants remove bags


In the case of business/first, you get settled in and they give you a drink if you want one. And in a comfortable chair rather than in a long line in the jetway. You may hang out in the airline lounge though until the last minute and just take your seat. (Depending upon how close the lounge is to the gate which can be a bit of a hike on international flights.) [ADDED: As sibling noted though, overhead space isn't even really guaranteed in business though the attendants will try to squeeze it in somewhere.]

There's a whole other class of passengers with status in various forms of economy that, as you say, don't have dedicated overhead so if they wait too long, they can run out too as people start filling in the front storage on their way to further back in the plane.


Why isn’t overhead bin space a paid product instead of checked luggage? It feels like the incentives are inverted. If you want the luxury of taking your bag from above your head and rolling out to the curb, that should cost more than having to wait at the baggage claim.


Because checked luggage requires baggage handlers.


I have noticed a lot of folks will toss their overhead well forward of their seat. So by the time you get to the back there’s plenty of overhead but the folks in the front have to walk back AND wait for the entire plane to deboard to get their stuff.

It makes more sense when thinking of the deboarding logistics to go front to back to ensure those sitting in the front will have overhead space at their seat as intended.

Basically people ruined it.


Ha ha ha, coincidentally I just explained this to my son on a recent trip. There are seven levels of boarding classes for Alaska Airlines. Seven.

Seems simple if one cares to admit it: Status.

No judgment here, even though we were in fact in the last category of seven. Not needing extra time for kids/elderly, not premier, not business, not military, not strata du jour...so yes, our category boarded from the back to front! Sort of... :-)


Which is really a product of higher checked bag fees so now overhead is at a premium and often runs out, hence why getting on early is so important to people.


Every flight I've been on checks bags for free when space runs out, my issue is I deliberately never check bags because they lost my luggage once and I never want to repeat that again.


You normally get one. But I have learned I keep 2-3days of clothes in a carry on because of lost luggage. I also now toss airtags in my luggage. Probably useless, not like the airline is gonna care.

Generally though, I just hate flying and try to avoid it.


The annoying anecdote I've heard about airtags is that even if they lose your luggage and you go to them saying you can literally pinpoint exactly where it's at in the airport, they refuse to deviate from their existing broken system to retrieve it for you. And I believe some airlines have explicitly forbidden airtags in luggage, likely for the exact reason of it highlighting how stupid this process is.


Yeah that would be my expectation. The plan was to, in the worst case grease the skids with niceness and maybe some cash.

But ultimately yeah. That was the full expectation that they wouldn’t care in the slightest.


Yeah; it is amazing how much nicer Southwest boarding is, with one free checked bag, than say, JetBlue, which charges for carry ons, then runs out of overhead space anyway, and tries to pay people (with a tiny travel vouncher; lol) to voluntarily check their carry ons.

For bonus points, they have to police the size of carry ons to make sure no one sneaks on to the plane with something that won’t fit under their seat.

Of course, their website obfuscates these terrible policies, so then you get to watch a line of people that look like they want to scream at the poor boarding agents.


My favorite perverse incentive lately is the trend of only allowing larger bags in the overhead bans. If you try to put a smaller item like a backpack up there, they will insist that you put it under the seat in front of you instead.

The workaround is obvious: always travel with a larger bag, even if it's mostly empty.


People say this and I don't believe it. At the airport, what I see is business travelers with their carry-on (roll-aboards are often unnecessary space wasters but that's another topic)--and generally they wouldn't even need to pay for checked luggage anyway whether because of status or expensing it; they just don't want to wait for baggage claim or lose the flexibility when flight schedules go sideways. It's couples and families who mostly seem to be checking half their worldly possessions.


Not only the fees, but also the wait at baggage claim for a bag that never comes...


> Seems simple if one cares to admit it: Status.

I'm always gobsmacked at the obvious class divide during boarding, and the efforts they go to in order to maintain it. The HUGE signs that "PREMIUM" are over here, and everyone else is over there. I also really like those barriers and retractable ropes/fences they put up, and how they try exceptionally hard to stop me sitting remotely close to the 'Premium' boarding area, even just to read a book.

I don't do anything else much in big public gatherings (public transport, sporting events, live music), so I think it's particularly jarring for me.


I confess of my guilt in this respect. When I am fortunate enough to sit in a higher class or board early I can't help but feel a little smug about it. On an airplane, dignity has a price...


It's literally because people who have paid for business class want to board first.

Think it through. You've just been charged an extra $500 to sit in a chair for four hours, and you're waiting in line behind a mother with five screaming children? You've got very important business things to attend to! Or whatever!

IDK if you ever watched _Veep_ but there's this marvellous episode where a megadonor is complaining that he didn't get more chicken than the $100-plate crowd at a fundraiser. He was literally counting (let's generously say) $5 chicken breasts.

Never mind that he was a hominid of roughly the same proportion as everyone else in the room; did not metabolize food any faster or differently; and certainly couldn't care less about $5.

So: like that, but for air travel.


> to sit in a chair for four hours

And this is why I usually wait towards the end of boarding to get on the plane no matter where I'm sitting.


Actually at least for airplanes in Greece (and I'd presume the whole EU) families with small children have precedence over business class passengers.


US as well.


If this question interests you, doing a search for "airline turn around time statistics" is likely to take you to lots of interesting discoveries.

As is commonly the case when one looks at a giant industry and says "I could do this way better having thought about it for 30 seconds" this is a far more difficult problem to optimize than it appears on first glance.


I used to travel ...a lot... Minimum twice a week, usually 4+. As an engineer (and process consultant), I spent countless hours sitting at airport gates looking for any optimization I could find, mostly focusing on wasteful and (seemingly expensive) boarding processes.

My favorite half-baked + stupid + fun one: Install the plane seating area at the gate itself, as a separate detached entity on a conveyor belt. Passengers can take their time, it's open, there aren't walls. You can just walk right into Row 20, seat A. No squeezing down aisles. Once everyone arrives and takes their seat, the belt moves and shuttles the seats+passengers into the fuselage. Kinda like a mini-roller coaster. Shut doors. Take off. Repeat in reverse after landing.

(There are obviously serious problems with this. You'd have to redesign planes and gates, at a minimum.)


I have a feeling that trying to get people organized enough for some sort of carefully optimized boarding program would take longer than the time it would actually save


Southwest does it pretty well.

Everyone has a number on their ticket and you form a line.


Funny story saw a passenger who had C-3 on his Southwest boarding pass, and thought that his assigned seat was in Row 3, Seat C.


Illogical statement, given that we already have an order which is in fact adhered to. It's merely a seemingly backwards one.


Ryanair boards from both directions (except in airports which require the use of jet bridges); your ticket tells you which door to go to.

Of course, some fraction of passengers always ignore this, leading to a certain amount of chaos.


“Ryanair” means “chaos” in the original Anglo-Saxon ;)


Because God forbid first class people have to walk extra long!

Here's an unethical life pro tip. When I fly for business, I intentionally wait until the final boarding call to get on.

Why?

Because then I would sit where ever I felt like on the plane! Extra leg room aisle rows? You betcha! Since I fly red eyes often, this would sometimes get me 3 seat rows to myself.

One time I got extra bold and just sat in an open first class seat. Managed to go half way before the stewardess said I shouldn't be in first class. She didn't make me leave however and I wasn't drinking their booze.


I always thought it was because the plane would tip if you put all that weight in the back


This does happen. Some planes, like stretch 737s, have preventive tail-stands ground crew can attach to the back of the plane at the gate.


That would be something


Last week I boarded an Air Canada 787 out of Hawaii, and it kinda-sorta did that, and not only that, window seats first. I think there was like 7 or 8 groups. The first few was the usual 1st Class and people that paid extra, but then the final bunch were all back to front AND outside to inside. That didn't seem to be the case for the same flight from Toronto, same plane too.


WilMA - Window, Middle, Aisle


So that the people who paid the most get fist dibs on the overhead bins.


I watched a YouTube video on this topic a long time ago. This isn't the exact video but similar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMgarcFkXz4 (Vox)

tldw: random boarding turns out to be the fastest


It's a good explanation and pretty much what you'd think.. the best way is to minimize people bunching up anywhere. Though I will say I've flown on many of those airlines they list as using "back to front" and they definitely didn't use that method.

Southwest being the fastest also makes sense, as people who can choose their own seats will gravitate to open areas rather than waiting for someone to stow their carry-on so they can sit next to them.


Method one if you have access to both doors of the plane. They tell you which entrance to use based on your row number. (First half uses the first entrance, second uses the rear)

Method two: You start boarding based on your zone number. The people seated in the rear go first.

It sounds like a combination of the two would be even better but it would be hard to manage.

Isn't this how it's done around the world?

(Last piece of the puzzle to solve the biggest issue with boarding, you need dedicated flight attendends who will find a place for your carry on. They sometimes even ask some people to take their smaller items from out of the bin and put them under the seat)


CGP Grey covered this already years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo. It doesn't work even optimally.

But more importantly, boarding isn't the only action being taken. You can't take off without fuel and luggage, and even food factors into turnarounds.


I've heard an excellent way to board is to have people walk as far into the plane as possible, then take a nearby seat when they can't walk further. This is like boarding back-to-front, but handles variance in luggage loading more efficiently.


Back to front is better but not there l that much more efficient. You really want to board outside in. Window seats then middle seats then aisle. I think there was a study down that showed random boarding was best


Because First Class flyers need to be served their alcohol and pre-flight snacks.


Every person stuffing a bag into a bin says "this will only take a second" but all these bag stuffings add up.

Ask such people to step out of the aisle for a moment to let others pass, or if that fails, just run'em down.


There's some planes where you can board at the same time from front or back.

I think it's an issue of missing arms at the airport or doesn't add that much convenience but it's doable


I don't know any that are front and back these days--at least using jet bridges which is just about any major airport. But it's common on certain wide-bodies to have separate doors for First/Business and the various economy classes.


I was recently on a Norwegian.com flight and they boarded both in the front (using a jet bridge) and at the back (using stairs)


I haven't seen that in years. I think it was 727s used to do that pre-jet bridges. But I guess some models in some airports can still do that.


Ryanair and wizz air has had front and backboarding on like 90% of all my flights the last couple of years.


I’ve seen this more in Europe than US. In US it seems like only the larger planes doing intercontinental flights will sometimes have front and back boarding, but I attribute that just to the shear amount of people to load into the aircraft.


As I said in another comment, it's not even front and back--it's business class and economy. (Both from the front.) I'm pretty sure I haven't seen back boarding in a US (or for that matter European or Asian) airport, given the airlines I generally fly, in probably decades.


It’s quite common in Europe, at least on budget airlines. EasyJet, Norwegian, Ryanair all do it. I’ve also had back boarding on domestic flights in India. I know in Europe it’s literally because the airports charge extra for using the jetway and the budget airlines, not wanting to pay that, have everyone on the tarmac anyway so why not just toss another stairway up and get people on faster. This is especially true when the weather is garbage and they don’t want some tweet from someone complaining about having to stand forever in the queue in the freezing rain to get on their plane when there’s a perfectly good back door sitting there.

I’ve lived in the USA for most of my life and I don’t think I’ve ever done back boarding, and have perhaps deplaned from the back once. It’s very rare here.

It’s quite crazy to me that people don’t do back boarding more often, but perhaps the YouTube comment on the CGPGrey video above was telling: a pilot said that boarding isn’t actually the bottleneck, it’s getting everyone’s checked baggage on board. So even after everyone is taking forever to board there’s still more to wait on, so why would airlines even bother to make it faster when it’s not the real bottleneck.


I don't think the budget Airlines care about press...

But what they do care is turnaround time, and minimising boarding and deboarding is effective in making it shorter. Whole goal of such airlines is to fit as many flights in regular day as they can. And cutting some minutes or tens of minutes is effective for them.


Indeed, Ryanair is kind of notorious about using “bad” press as advertisement. Every year or so there’s a new story about how they are ostensibly going to start charging to use the restroom or make people stand up in exchange for even cheaper tickets


Yeah, I hear a lot of "We're waiting for our final paperwork," "We just have a few passengers from a connecting flight," etc. It doesn't usually seem like a lot of "Will you slowpokes just get into your damned seats so we can take off."


Ah. I've never flown any of the budget airlines. It makes sense they'd prioritize speeding boardings whatever it takes.


I’ve boarded flight that have both front or back boarding depending on seat aisle


I prefer to think that the most attractive people are those who are most relaxed.


Class and carry-on space?


They are


Just ban carry on luggage.

Of course this won't happen because of all the business travellers.

But I've noticed that lots of time is spent trying to stow carry ons and close overhead bins.

Just ban carry ons and reserve the time for getting people into their seats.


So you want to ban carry-on luggage so you can get seated 10 minutes faster - guaranteeing that every traveler needs to spend another 10 minutes at their destination waiting for their checked bag to show up at the baggage claim. How does that make sense?


10?? In larger airports it can be much longer, assuming your bag even makes it.

Disclosure: after my last misrouted bag, I have probably checked bags twice since 2011.


The time is not spent boarding the plane.

It is spent waiting on bags in the terminal.

Solve each problem independently and stop trying to mix them.

Also, we don't have to ban carry ons, we can use Hacker News and Reddit's favorite blunt tool - taxes.

Apply a large add on cost (taxes) for each carry on. The larger and heavier, the more add on paid.

This would also offset the fuel costs of carry ons.

Of course business users could just expense the carry on add on cost, which preserves carry ons for them


Why would you apply this weight-based tax to just the carry-on bags, and not checked luggage, or the passengers themselves?


> and not checked luggage, or the passengers themselves?

Checked luggage are weighed and accounted for at check in.

For passengers - just assume 136 KG (which is really generous) times (the number of seats plus total crew)


Whenever I've checked my luggage, it has more often than not been at least temporarily misplaced, if not permanently lost. I mean this literally -- more than 50% of the time, something has gone wrong.

I know that I'm a data point of one and am really just unlucky, but regardless, I am quite simply never checking my luggage ever again.

I have to imagine that if carry-ons were banned, and thus the amount of checked baggage increased, more luggage would be lost. Also, more time would presumably be spent waiting on the tarmac while the luggage is loaded, so all this "saved" time would really just amount to more time spent sitting there doing nothing.

So yeah, this suggestion is a hard pass from me.


I'm sorry you've lost baggage and checked items.

But I've been checked bag gang for life.

It's so easy to walk around an airport and board a plane without dragging carry ons behind you.

The worst issue I've had, knock on wood, is broken roller bag wheels, but the airlines have always compensated me a new luggage credit.


It sounds like you have a straightforward way to get a lot of free clothes.


Eh. The one time my bag was lost, I gave up after around a month of back and forth trying to get the money for the lost bag. It just wasn’t worth my time.


Yes, arriving in a destination with zero clothes and spending all my time trying to get my stuff back instead of enjoying whatever I'm there to do is totally a great thing that I'd love to experience again because it might result in me having to purchase all my clothes again an unspecified time later. Absolute win.


I've had this happen to me once and I did spend way too much of my trip time coaxing their broken system to get me my bag back.

As I understand it, the right thing to do is go shopping for the clothes you need as soon as your bag is missing, and then request reimbursements for those costs.

This is congruent with how the claim process worked out for me. Although perhaps airlines have been working on weaseling out of their liability in the name of cost cutting.


Oh hell no, not when airlines charge huge fees for checked bags. If I’m away for less than a week I move heaven and earth to get everything into a carryon, and most people seem to do the same. You can’t blame us for responding to incentives.


If I'm taking a mostly urban type trip, I can pretty much fit needed stuff for an indefinite period (which is admittedly pretty much never longer than three weeks) into a fully-compliant carry-on. About the only times I check luggage is for outdoor activities or if I have to carry business-related stuff to an event.




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