The Optimal Way to Board Plane Passengers

Jan. 4, 2009 — -- "Zone 4 is now boarding."

With that announcement, one lines up, walks past the ticket-taker, down the ramp, and eventually enters the plane to witness a few people valiantly crunching their ungainly carry-on bags into the overhead compartments and most others impatiently waiting in the aisles to do the same. Those already in the aisle seats are casting a wary eye on the next backpack threatening to attack them when its owner unthinkingly pivots in the aisle.

Is the standard boarding method really the best way to load an airplane? There are variations, but almost all methods currently in use board by seat or zone number so that those whose seats are near the back of the plane board first and hence don't block passengers boarding after them. That's the theory, at least.

Alas, since the people in a single row can't all stow their bags simultaneously, there are always people blocking the aisle as they try to stow their bags. Moreover, those sitting in the aisle seats are not only dodging passing luggage, but must rise and let later-arriving passengers sitting in the window and middle seats enter their row. It's a time-consuming, spirit-sapping mess.

Enter Jason Steffen, an astrophysicist at Fermi Lab near Chicago. Using computer simulations, he has examined different plane boarding strategies with an eye toward their speed and efficiency.

For simplicity, his model assumes a plane with 120 passengers seated in 40 rows, each with a central aisle having three seats to the left and three seats to the right of it. It also assumes that each of the 120 passengers has an assigned seat number and carry-on baggage and that they move forward if and only if no one is directly in front of them.

So, given these reasonable assumptions, what's the best way to board? It seems intuitive that the worst way is to load those passengers seated in the front of the plane first and then those a bit further back and so on. And this is, in fact, the worst way to board passengers.

So, it might seem almost as intuitive that the standard way -- loading the back rows first and then gradually rows nearer the front -- should be among the best ways to board, but Steffen's simulations indicate that this is the second-slowest way. Even random boarding is faster.