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THE job of the professional astrophysicist is to contemplate the music of the spheres. Given the global nature of modern science, however, today’s astrophysicists often spend just as much time confronting the cacophony of the airport. Now, one of them has devised a way to make that experience a little less tedious. Jason Steffen, from Fermilab, near Chicago, has designed and experimentally tested a faster method of boarding aeroplanes. By his calculation, it could save airlines hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Dr Steffen spends his time thinking about such things as extrasolar planets, dark matter and cosmology. After waiting in a particularly long queue to board a flight, though, he began to harbour an interest in the mechanics of getting people on to planes. In 2008 he wrote a computer simulation to test different methods. Using a numerical technique familiar to him from his day job, he was able to find what looked like the best. He has put his answer to the test, and the results have just been submitted for publication to the Journal of Air Transport Management.

According to Dr Steffen, two things bog down the boarding process. The first is that passengers are often forced to wait in the aisle while those ahead of them stow their luggage and then get out of the way. The second is that passengers already seated in aisle or middle seats often have to get up and move into the aisle to let others take seats nearer the window. Dr Steffen’s proposal minimises the former type of disturbance and eliminates the latter.

In the Steffen method, passengers are boarded by seat type (ie, window, middle or aisle) while also ensuring that neighbours in the boarding queue are seated in alternating rows. First, the window seats for every other row on one side of the plane are boarded. Next, alternate rows of window seats on the opposite side are boarded. Then, the window seats in the skipped rows are filled in on each side. The procedure then repeats with the middle seats and the aisles.

By boarding alternate rows in this way, passengers are spaced far enough apart along the aisle to stow their luggage in parallel, all at the same time. Because passengers in the same seat types board together, they do not have to step over each other to swap seats.

To test the idea, Dr Steffen conducted a test using passengers and a mock Boeing 757 fuselage. The fuselage had a single aisle and 12 rows. Seventy-two passengers (including families with children) boarded, towing their bags and roll-aboard suitcases. In addition to the Steffen method, the team tried boarding in a strict back-to-front order, block boarding (the system now used by most airlines, with passengers assigned to groups within the cabin) and boarding in random order (which made its debut at American Airlines earlier this summer).

Standard block boarding turned out to be the slowest way to do things, taking almost seven minutes to fill the 12 rows. Dr Steffen’s system took half that time. Indeed, it was the fastest performing of the methods tested. With full-sized planes, the benefit should increase, as more people can stow their luggage simultaneously along the longer aisles.

Although Dr Steffen admits that the airline industry has shown no interest in his method so far, he points out that, in principle, there should be no barriers to its adoption. Though directing airline passengers on to a plane is a little like herding cats some airlines, such as Southwest, already try to get their passengers to line up in a certain order before boarding. If travellers believed that complying with the new arrangements really would make their lives easier, they would probably do so. And by Dr Steffen’s calculations, airlines have a pretty strong incentive to persuade them. Previous work has shown that every minute a plane spends at the terminal costs $30. Assuming the average carrier runs 1,500 flights a day, saving as little as six minutes per flight would add up to $100m a year. For hard-pressed airlines running on razor-thin margins, that really would be astronomical.

http://www.economist.com/node/21528218

The Plane Truth: Boarding by Rows Is the Worst Possible Way, Says Physicist

Let’s face it: boarding an airplane with luggage is just downright frustrating. Not only do you have to puzzle out how you are going to wrestle your carry-on bag into the aircraft’s tiny overhead compartment, but you have to do it while trying not to get swept away by the tugging current of other passengers.

“OK, everybody count off!”
Courtesy of Steffen, arXiv

But surely not all boarding procedures are created equal—simply boarding the plane back to front would be the easiest and most efficient method, right? Wrong. In fact, boarding by sequential rows is the worst possible approach (pdf), according to a new study by physicist Jason Steffen of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics.

Steffen tested the efficiency of several different boarding procedures by sending 72 luggage-toting passengers into a movie-set Boeing 757. Among the boarding techniques tested was the zone/block style, where passengers fill the plane back to front, one large group at a time; WilMA, or Window, Middle, then Aisle (how the “l” got where it did is a mystery); and Steffen’s own procedure (imaginatively called “the Steffen method”), which incorporates both the other two techniques (see chart).

Steffen timed how long it took the passengers to fill the plane under the different boarding procedures and found that the block style takes the longest, falling well behind the uber-sophisticated “random boarding” method—letting everyone on at the same time. The Steffen method was the quickest because it maximized the number of people who could use the aisle concurrently without crashing into each other.

So, Steffen argues, if airline companies started implementing his method, they could save money by shortening the amount of time the planes have spend in the terminal. But can you imagine how long it would take to get people to line up in the correct order in the first place?
Reference: J. Steffen and J. Hotchkiss. Experimental test of airplane boarding methods. arXiv:1108.5211v1

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/08/29/the-plane-truth-boarding-by-rows-is-the-worst-possible-way-says-physicist/

How to cut boarding time in HALF

<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/o9-XjEI8VmA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Boarding a plane is a completely miserable, time-consuming experience. How often are you left waiting for that oversized man jam his oversized luggage into the undersized overhead compartment? Ridiculous! That’s why every airline needs to try this new boarding method. It cuts the time in half.

Amazingly, it was invented by Dr. Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist in his day job but a man more adept at running airplanes than the airlines themselves. In his method, window seats on alternate rows on one side of the plane boards first. Then alternating window seats on the other side. Then alternating middle seats on the original side, then alternating middle seats on the other side. And then on and on and on until the plane is filled. Watch the video, you’ll see a perfectly choreographed dance that maximizes aisle space and overhead compartments.

Steffen figured out this method using the Monte Carlo optimization method and promises that it can cut boarding time in half. It won’t cure the ineptitude of airlines in other areas but it can make air travel less of a pain in the ass. Delta? United? American? JetBlue? Virgin America? Who’s in? [WBEZ via Consumerist]

http://www.rdhub.com/?p=7236

Flying straight into the competition

Karamjit Kaur
The Straits Times
Publication Date : 19-08-2011

Australian airline Qantas is looking at either Singapore or Kuala Lumpur as the base for a new premium carrier it plans to launch. Its decision either way will have an impact not only on rival Singapore Airlines (SIA) and local carriers, but on the hub status of Singapore's Changi Airport. Qantas' new start-up is among several initiatives to boost business and salvage its loss-making international operations. Chief executive Alan Joyce has not disclosed much about it. What is known is that the new entity will be a separate brand from Qantas' distinctive flying kangaroo, and will kick off with a fleet of 11 single-aisle Airbus 320 aircraft. Many aviation watchers think Qantas will pick Singapore. But KL's appeal cannot be dismissed either. In some ways, Singapore is the obvious choice because Qantas and its low-cost arm Jetstar, is already the largest single foreign player at Changi, accounting for about 10.5 per cent of the total number of weekly seats. The SIA group, including regional airline SilkAir, controls 40 per cent of the market. Singapore is also a key hub for Qantas on the Australia-Britain route. In contrast, Qantas does not fly direct to KL. Picking Singapore would allow the new Qantas carrier to leverage on Changi Airport's position as a hub for premium and business travellers, and let it tap Changi's network of over 100 airlines operating to more than 200 cities. Kuala Lumpur International Airport is served by about 60 carriers. But there are also sound arguments in favour of KL being the base of the new carrier. For one thing, it allows Qantas to deepen existing partnerships with AirAsia and full-service carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS). In January last year, AirAsia and Jetstar inked a deal to pool resources and expertise in a drive to slash costs and lower ticket prices. More recently, Qantas sponsored MAS' entry into the Oneworld global aviation alliance, which includes Qantas, British Airways and Cathay Pacific. This allows Qantas, which has a limited presence in Asia, to leverage on MAS' network to expand its own reach. But business links between the Qantas family and the MAS family do not necessarily mean that the Australian carrier should plant its new flag in KL. Flying out of KL could be counter-productive as the new entity could take away market share from the local players. By the same token, a new Qantas arm in Singapore that targets the premium market is going to hurt SIA and its regional carrier SilkAir. Already, SIA's market share and yields have eroded in recent years, in the face of competition from regional budget carriers and improved service from full-service airlines like Emirates and Cathay Pacific. A new Qantas-backed carrier flying out of Singapore will intensify the heat on SIA. SIA is already preparing for a more competitive skyscape. It plans to launch its own long-haul low-cost carrier by the middle of next year. It recently struck a deal with Virgin Australia to code-share - sell seats on each other's services - and coordinate flight schedules for seamless transfers. Whether its preferred choice is Singapore or KL, Qantas will need the official nod from the relevant civil aviation regulator to launch its new carrier. If Qantas wants to fly its new carrier out of Singapore, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) must scrutinise what value the new carrier will bring to Singapore. How will the new carrier enhance Singapore's position as a premier air hub in the region and make Changi more attractive to both airlines and travellers? Will the new carrier launch new routes and markets? Or is the intention merely to snatch market share away from SIA and other incumbents that fly out of Singapore? CAAS will have to strike a balance between promoting Changi as an air hub, and safeguarding the interests of existing airlines, including SIA, that fly out of Singapore. Its assessment must be guided ultimately by what is best for the country. Unlike some other countries reluctant to open their skies to foreign carriers for fear of weakening their own local airlines, the Singapore Government has always adopted a liberal stance. Having more airlines and linkages out of Singapore makes Changi attractive to travellers, and promotes business links and overall economic growth. The interests of SIA and other local airlines sometimes have to take a back seat to this paramount objective. This was a position then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew reiterated when he got involved in a dispute between SIA and its pilots several years ago. He had declared in January 2004 that if budget airlines were to eat into SIA's profits, his reaction would be: "So be it". This was because the more important objective was "our remaining a busy air hub". This of course does not mean that the Government does not push for SIA's rights and that of other local carriers. When air deals are sealed between countries, these are often the end result of delicate manoeuvring, with one eye on the commercial interests of the country's carrier/s and the other on the wider benefits that increased traffic will bring to that country. The ideal scenario from Singapore's point of view would be for the Australian carrier to fly out of Singapore in return for SIA getting air rights between Australia and the United States which it has long lobbied for. But even if no such deal is struck, CAAS should consider an application from Qantas on its own merit. If satisfied that Qantas' new arm will benefit Changi Airport and Singapore's aviation industry, then it must say yes to the kangaroo, even if it hurts Singapore's national airline SIA. But even that need not be a zero sum game. In fact, one can argue that SIA's success to date is due in part to the airline having to constantly upgrade and improve its services and products to deal with the competition. To its credit, SIA has risen to the challenge. There is every chance it will do so again, even if Qantas is allowed to plant its new flag at Changi.

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