{"id":280,"date":"2008-05-22T06:05:09","date_gmt":"2008-05-22T10:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=274"},"modified":"2008-05-22T06:05:09","modified_gmt":"2008-05-22T10:05:09","slug":"more-about-airlines-and-operations-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/05\/22\/more-about-airlines-and-operations-research\/","title":{"rendered":"More about Airlines and Operations Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another sign of the difficulty operations research has in getting implemented within airlines comes from the National Post<\/em> in Canada<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Attention passengers: most airlines make boarding more painful than necessary by insisting on traditional back-to-front boarding even though new research shows it can be done faster.<\/p>\n

Back-to-front boarding is only marginally more efficient than front-to-back boarding, but much slower than filling seats in alternate rows, beginning with windows seats from back to front, then middle and aisle seats.<\/p>\n

The new research, to be published in the forthcoming edition of the Journal of Air Transport Management, found this optimal boarding method cuts down boarding time by about half, from 25 minutes to 12 or 13 minutes for an aircraft that seats 120 passengers. Back-to-front boarding is “very likely the second worst method,” concludes American physicist Jason Steffen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has been previous work on improved boarding<\/a>.\u00a0 Will airlines use it?\u00a0 Probably not:<\/p>\n

In Canada, the two major airlines say they like the status quo and have no plans to redraft boarding policies based on new research showing there are faster ways.<\/p>\n

WestJet has tried out different boarding methods, and has landed on random boarding. The company won’t release details of its tests, but says random boarding is up to 20% faster than sequential boarding.<\/p>\n

Air Canada conducted its own research a few years ago to test various boarding techniques, including random boarding and window-middle-aisle ordering.<\/p>\n

Spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick conceded that while traditional back-to-front “is not necessarily the most expeditious, we concluded it is the most customer-friendly. Customers are accustomed to the system, so we do not have to provide a lengthy explanation prior to every flight.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another sign of the difficulty operations research has in getting implemented within airlines comes from the National Post in Canada: Attention passengers: most airlines make boarding more painful than necessary by insisting on traditional back-to-front boarding even though new research shows it can be done faster. Back-to-front boarding is only marginally more efficient than front-to-back … Continue reading “More about Airlines and Operations Research”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-applications","category-or-in-the-press"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}