The secrets of a quick embarkation
 

Are there any secrets on speeding the embarkation of passengers? Lets assume you have assigned numbers and the boarding is not done in rows.

Which is the technique that works and which are the mistakes made?

I am not looking to point finger just any ideas how I might help next time I fly?

Rwy in Sight

Herding cats
 

Well, a couple of cattle dogs and a stock whip may help :E:uhoh:

How about telling fellow crew to stop gossiping and standing in the aisle - and here is a novel suggestion - assist pax.....nah that must be against health and safety god forbid.:}

I boarded an A330 in 17 minutes once as we were massively late on a turnaround.

We put crew checking the boarding cards OUTside on the bridgeto tell pax to go left our right before they got to the door. So effectively had 2 at a time going through the door. Suppose that trick wouldn't work on any small planes.

Also told crew in cabin to be proactive and politely hustle people into their seats!!

Also helps if ground staff (I am one of them) keeps an eye on excessive hand-luggage. having a printout of the hand baggage allowance (the one passengers never read in their "terms and conditions of travel") helps when the passengers disagree. Then again, passengers not trying to bring 4 cases plus duty free on board and abiding by the rules of transportation would be the best option. :}

In addition to cattle dogs and stock whips a battery operated cattle prod may help 'push em up ' so to speak .

Aisle be with you...
 

During some trials i was involved with some time ago, it proved speedier than normal, in a basic form, when operating a 2 aisle aircraft, to board ABC and HJK together, then centre block.

It could be broken down further by doing in sections working back from the rear. My recollection is that rows of 10-15 at a time was optimal, but depends on load factor. Full flight, smaller sections.

Ban hand luggage - after 911 you could board a 747 in the blink of an eye! It was beautiful to watch and most pax commented on it to.

One appreciates this is not really an option for reasons of convenience but still.....

Well I'll ignore the tone and be honest. Cabin Crew at most airlines are specifically trained not to assist pax loading baggage into the hat rack. Understandable given all the gumph some bring on weighs a ton! Additionally crew are required to be in the aisles (though preferably not blocking them) for boarding on some aircraft. I assume in your lifetime you have had a bad experience or two but how about not tarring the entire community with the same brush and just attempting to be constructive?

SLF here - I've posted recently about this in the SLF forum, where I was griping about the strangely inept performance of SWISS cabin crew in getting everyone on board and seated. In contrast, I've witnessed some absolute marvels, such as SQ crew getting a packed 777-200 fully boarded in Jakarta in just under 15 minutes.

Having watched this carefully for some time, I would say the key factors are:

1. Active involvement from the cabin crew. If you're allowed to help stow hand luggage, that makes a big difference. But so does active, cheerful chivvying, guidance and encouragement. (The SWISS crews I was complaining about just stand around, and sometimes actively get in the way. At the other end of the scale, EZY crews work like slaves to get everyone seated, rearrange things in the overhead bins to make space, etc etc.)

2. Anticipating, identifying and quickly responding to the problems that cause bottlenecks. This is where the SQ crew really shone - they'd instantly and magically appear at the side of anyone blocking the aisle, and sort out whatever the problem was. Sometimes it's just a matter of tactfully asking the pax to stand in front of the seat while he sorts out his reading matter, or fiddles with his mobile phone. This is obviously easier to do in a twin-aisle, as you have more chance of reaching the problem area quickly.

Thanks for asking the question. Slow embarkation is something that drives me nuts, and often seems to delay the departure of flights that would otherwise be on time. I have no idea why some airlines tolerate it - it must cost them a fortune.

One thing I try to do is give them guidance on where their seat is, it saves them reading every row sign as they go down. 29F, over to the other aisle, it's on your right half way down. 13A, window seat on this aisle. If they don't know what a window is I offload them.;)

I agree with Gibon2. Last 5 years I have flown almost exclusively EZY and they are the greatest at getting you seated. Plenty of other things about them I don't like (free-for-all boarding for one) but they do the job, staff are great and prices are cheap. Long haul is different of course.

From experience that seems to be the biggest problem. A complete lack of spatial awareness, and total disregard for everyone else. I'm not sure that CC can address that easily without the use of a megaphone in a single aisle aircraft!

SLF cannot be trusted to self-load ;)

make the announcement"last passenger in their seat pays the fuel bill" that should do the trick:ok:

Turn up the heating in the terminal! Boarding is always quicker in the summer or a warm climate as no-one has to wriggle out of a coat!

Free seating helps too, always provokes an unseemly stampede to get the best seat/ seats together etc. But its every man for himself; I've seen people trampled before!

I'm loving the cattle prod though - where can I get one?

Good point. Another problem is when airline staff attempt to board pax from rear to front there will always be one or two who do not understand that "Passengers in seat rows 20 to 30." does not include row 15 :ugh:

Witnessed a beauty the week before last. Bad weather had delayed the last Virgin Blue flight to sydney. As we were waiting in the departure lounge, Jetstar announce their flight to sydney will be cancelled due to curfew.

The virgin ground staff make a PA explaining that if people take too long to board, the flight may be cancelled due to the curfew.

The cabin crew re-iterated the message in a friendly way during boarding, and after take off the captain came on the pa and thanked the cabin crew and the passengers for the 'team' effort of boarding so quickly.

From the time the beacon switched off to the time the safety demo finished as we were taxying out for take off - a total of 21 minutes had elapsed on a full 737-800.

We landed 4 minutes before curfew kicked in.

I've often wondered what happened to WILMA - window, middle then aisle seats, which I saw used a few years back.

I've noticed that Delta assign passengers to one of around seven groups which board in order. The top one is for premium passengers but the remainder are presumably in sequence to stop passengers tripping over each other. Does anyone have a view as to whether it helps?

One problem is that people often arrive late at a gate particularly if transferring.

I try to board early if I am sitting at the back of a plane but if the queue to board is very long I give up and stay seated until it shortens. You can try and prevent those sitting at the front of the plane boarding too soon, but you can't do the reverse.

Board Earlier
 

Purely from an observant passenger point of view, and fully understanding this would not be possible on short haul ops - my solution is to board pax earlier.
How many times are we sat in a departure lounge for ages looking at the plane waiting to board with 10 mins to go before scheduled departure time. then the usual anouncements and the scrum begins.
I know the do-gooders here will go on about preparing the cabin etc, but allow more time and let passengers drift on as they arrive at the gate. I have experienced this with a far eastern airline and IT WORKS. I know the purists will go on about passengers getting in the way of cabin staff etc but we should not loose sight of what we are trying to achieve.
Long Haul aircraft are often at the gate with at least a couple of hours to go before departure, so rather than que pax in a gate allow them to drift onto the aircraft as they arrive - works on trains, we don't have to be coralled in a gate to get on them!
Should cause a stir amongst the die hards - but trying to think out of the box here

From my point of view, as ex Cabin Crew, we always boarded as soon as security checks were completed. It's not about you getting in the way as we did this but about the fact that the aircraft, by law, cannot be boarded until these checks are completed.

Often downroute despite the time the aircraft spends on stand, it is spending much of this time being cleaned and catered. This is hard to do if you have 300 people sitting in the seats, they don't even let the crew on until they've finished!

If the aircraft only spent two minutes at the gate to board and disembark all the passengers (leaving everyone else behind), all the ground staff were given whistles and a surly attitude and there weren't security implcations no doubt we could shove you all on quickly to. Hell, if we could get dispensation to get underway while you're still looking to find a place for your bag and somewhere to sit whilst the passenger behind you is shouting "move down!" we really could get home quicker. Apples with apples please.

During my BOAC days at Prestwick I once saw a full VC10 boarded in about 3 minutes.

It wasn't one of ours, though. Maybe the rearward-facing seats helped to speed things up.