Craig Newmark:
You kinda think they would have figured it out by now
But no, they haven't.
Airlines and academics have been trying for years to determine the fastest way to load planes.
Buried deep in the LATimes article is this nugget:
One way to cut boarding time by up to four minutes, according to a study presented at the 2009 Swiss Transport Research Conference, is to reduce from 15% to 5% the percentage of passengers carrying two or more pieces of luggage.
Anyone but me thinking "duh"?
In case you missed it, we took a vacation to Montana last week. Funny story. Sunday morning we were on a 6:00 am flight out of Missoula that left at 6:40 am. Why was it late, you ask? Because 10% of the passengers couldn't find a overhead spot for their oversized carry on luggage. Upon our late arrival and after about a half mile run (gate D5 to G10) we barely made the connection for the flight to Charlotte (as we boarded we had our seats changed to first class so I'm finding it hard to complain too much ... although first class ain't all that).
My solution would be get rid of the fees for checking your first bag (keep a fee for the second bag to reduce overpacking -- I'm looking at you Tim). More people would check bags reducing the amount of carry on luggage and boarding time. In order to cover the lost revenue, the airfare would increase fares and people would book flights understanding what the true cost of the flight is (some behavioral economics: why do I always forget about the extra $100 it will cost for two people to check our bags?).
My solution to the boarding time problem doesn't solve another problem. Funny story. Upon arrival in Charlotte our luggage did not arrive with us. We anticipated this since the connection was so tight. But, we found out that our checked luggage did not even make it on the plane for the 6:00 am flight. Maybe the test tube of glacier water or something else caused the TSA to conduct an extensive search? Nope, no TSA notices in our luggage. So, our checked luggage inexplicibly did not even make it on the plane for the 6:00 am flight (that left 40 minutes late). Since we live two hours from the airport the airline drives our bags up to us, promising they'll arrive by 10:30 am the next day. Luckily (since I was sound asleep), I got a call a midnight and the driver had our bags at the front door. The poor guy had to drive back to Charlotte after midnight.
Another note: Our 7:23 pm flight to Minneapolis was delayed so we missed our connection to Missoula. We arrived Tuesday at 1:30 pm instead of Monday night. The airline was gracious enough not to charge us to check our bags twice.
