The time spent locating seats and jostling for overhead bin space can be one of the most stressful parts of air travel. It’s also a constant focus for airlines as they work to keep one eye on customer convenience and the other on the ledger.
United, Denver’s largest airline, has long used the window-middle-aisle — referred to as WilMA — approach of boarding travelers. After merging with Continental last year, there was an attempt to meld boarding methods.
Continental boarded rear to front, so United switched to create harmony.
“The long story short is that it didn’t go that well,” United spokeswoman Christen David said. “It wasn’t as efficient as we would have liked.”
There are plans to return to WilMA, but there is no exact date, David said, adding, “It will be a while, probably several months.”
American Airlines recently experienced similar adjustment issues. In May, the carrier switched from boarding rear to front to boarding people in the order they checked in to create a more random boarding process.
Airline officials said the process cuts boarding time by 5 percent to 10 percent. Flight attendants weren’t pleased, contending it required earlier reporting and no pay for the extra loading time. The situation has been altered to ease concerns.
The recent tweaks by United and American illustrate airlines’ search for an ideal boarding system.
It’s not simply a matter of convenience. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Transport Management found that every minute shaved off boarding means a $30 savings per flight.
“Passengers want something that is going to be quick and suits them,” said Mac Clouse, a finance professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “For airlines, there are financial incentives.”
By reducing the amount of time from when a plane arrives at the gate to the second it pulls out again, airlines can add another flight, potentially reducing the number of leased airport gates and ensuring planes get off on time.
Some studies show boarding consumes about 60 percent of the time a plane is at the gate.
Carry-ons complicate boarding, especially as customers seek to avoid the fees that accompany checking bags.
Two Swiss researchers reported in 2009 that boarding can be sped up by four minutes if the number of passengers with two or more carry-ons is reduced from 15 percent to 5 percent.
Astrophysicist Jason Steffen of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory found in a 2009 study that the optimum method is to board 10 passengers at a time in every other row so they don’t get in each other’s way.
Most airlines — such as Frontier — load rear to front after boarding families with young children, those requiring more time and what the industry calls “the elites” who pay for priority seating.
Loading rear to forward “is really helpful so we can do a quick turn,” said Peter Kowalchuk, spokesman for Denver-hubbed Frontier Airlines.
Cliff and Gloria Dunn, heading to Houston from Denver, prefer Frontier’s method. “With open seating, people take the first seat and there is congestion,” Cliff Dunn said.
Southwest has long offered open seating, though it was adjusted in 2007. Instead of passengers staking out ground at the gate, the Dallas- based airline moved to issuing A, B and C boarding designations when people checked in online.
“It’s brought order in the gate area,” said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz.
Southwest’s method “still is super quick once you get on board and we can turn the aircraft around quickly,” Mainz said. “Our average (turnaround) is just shy of 30 minutes.”
Ann Schrader: 303-954-1967 or aschrader@denverpost.com
