BATAVIA, Ill. (WBBM) — A Fermilab physicist thinks he’s solved a problem that costs airlines millions of dollars and costs travelers unlimited aggravation.
As WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports, Dr. Jason Steffen normally thinks about things like how did the universe start and where’s all the dark energy, but while mowing the lawn he decided to consider why it takes so much time to board an airplane and he came up with an idea.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s John Cody reports
Steffen said the current system of boarding the last five rows, then the next five rows forward — and so on — clearly wasn’t the way to go about it, because everybody is in the same tiny aisle trying to access the same seat rows and overhead bins at the same time.
Steffen says the ways it’s done now is about the slowest way it can be done.
He envisioned a number of different schemes until he hit upon what the calls “the optimum boarding plan,” which he’s tested with live people and their luggage, and found it cuts boarding almost in half.
Under his procedure, he boards every other window seat — first on one side, then every other window seat on the other side. Next comes every other middle seat, and then every other aisle seat. Then it starts again with remaining window seats, middle seats, then aisle seats.
That way, everyone has elbow room to put luggage in the overhead, then time to sit down before every other middle seat is boarded and so on.
He says that, in tests with 72 people in a small airplane, his procedure cut boarding time in half.
Steffen says it definitely works for boarding, but he doubts it will work as well for exiting, because passengers are impatient to get off and probably wouldn’t listen — even if the instructions would allow for a faster exit.
He says airlines have not been calling him, although his work has been widely published. But he says he believes that if all airlines followed his system, the total annual savings would be more than a billion dollars a year.