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How much faster?

Comment comment by markmcb on 14 December 2005

While interesting, I wonder just how much time is saved on a 200+ passenger plane. I didn't see any time figures in the articles.

In my experience, the boarding procedures are just shy of being a free-for-all anyway. They usually call a set of rows to start boarding, and before all of that group has gone through the ticket validation point, the next group is queued. It seems to me that they're already pushing people into the gate as fast as possible. I suppose randomization of passengers beyond row groups could help, but I just can't imagine it helping that much. If I missed a time stat somewhere, could someone fill me in?

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RE: How much faster? by Rhodizzle :: NR5

The reason that randomization would work better from a strictly conceptual point of view is because if you look at one person's boarding process, the longest time that they spend stationary is standing in the isle putting things in the overhead bin and whatnot before sitting down. If you load the plane from back to front, you have a much greater chance of these people holding things up.

Now for the Math. Lets say that we have a plane that seats 60 people, 15 rows of 4, with two being on each side. We then divide that plain into 3 "zones," with each zone being 5 rows, numbered with zone 1 in the back and 3 in the front. If you call for zone one, you have a 20% chance of the first person on the plane being from the row in that zone closest to the front of the plane. While they are putting their stuff away and getting ready to sit down, EVERYONE is waiting behind them to sit further back in the plane. So you've got 19 people waiting on 1 person in the alotted time. Much like jamming 20 bits through a 1-bit bus.

Now if you seat randomly, and take 33.3% from each zone and make them a part of zone 1, and so on until you've got one third of each of the zones from the previous paragraph packed into a zone, you've got the chance for at least three people to be putting up luggage at the same time. Now you've got 17 people waiting on 3 people to get ready in the alotted time. Now your putting 20 bits through a 3-bit bus, which is 3 times as fast as before!

I'm sure that it is wicked more complicated then that, but that is the basic explanation, at least in my head.

Posted 15 December 2005, Hide, Parent, Reply