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IMPROVING AIRLINES’ ON-TIME PERFORMANCE
Was the last time you travelled by air, it took too much? Did the flight get delayed? What happened? It’s so simple when you’re the one asking, isn’t it? You can even think of many ways to solve it. However, finding the right ones are complicated more than you think. What passengers dislike the most is getting stuck in the terminal, the apparently endless boarding time, and once again stuck on the runway.
Moving hundreds of passengers and their luggage off and onto an airplane and preparing an aircraft to depart on schedule within safety parameters are pretty much a challenge for any airline. Among the many factors contributing to airline’s on-time performance problems, the top three revolve around a very slow boarding process, maintenance problems whenever the temperature dropped below 30°F (snow hurdles not just for aircraft but also for the support vehicles, technical defects (insufficient fire cover, closed runway, out-of-operation baggage handling system), aircraft catering, fueling, cleaning), and occasional shortages of baggage handlers (EuroControl, 2017).
So, how to fix these problems? And what could really work?
For problems with the boarding process, five causes have been pointed out. First class passengers are boarded first. When the aisle is blocked by these passengers, it prevents those who would sit in coach from to get by and to get seated. Often, the passengers who have window seats have difficulties boarding because the ones who are seated along the aisles board first (they have to get up after all for the passengers sitting by the window to take their seat. It takes an awful lot of time.) Another often thing that prevents people to get by and get seated is when the ones seated in the front section of economy class board prior to the ones sitting behind them. From any specified row, just one passenger could take up the aisle area while putting the baggage in overhead bin at any specified time; hence, blocking the aisle, slowing down the process of putting away the luggage, and likewise slowing down the seat placements. Lastly, due to unintentional effects of fees for charging stowed baggage, passengers have been given incentives by the airline in packing cumbersome carry-on luggage, which are more difficult and troublesome when it comes to carrying it then jamming it into the overhead bin.
Whatever solution that comes to mind for reducing the time to board should consider increasing simultaneously using the entire aisle area. So, yes, no clogging in all directions including not only people getting through their seats but also passengers who are still not sitting and, not yet stowing their baggage when they have already arrived at their designated seats.
Alliance partners, business class, and first class definitely feed the airline’s finances so focusing on the easiest solutions would be better. But then again, the most ideal boarding method would be filling in the seat from back to front accordingly. So, there would be no clogging. How about opening up the other side of the airplane? If it takes at least 26 seconds for 6 passengers to ride a car using one door open but takes approximately 12 seconds when two doors from both sides are open, then it could be the same with an aircraft. Another boarding method could be the passengers boarding in groups (five to seven rows in the back, five to seven rows in the middle, and then five to seven rows in front). Better yet, boarding first the window-seaters, then the middle-seaters, and the aisle-seaters last. If none would work still from these systematic strategies, how about resorting to random seating arrangements or boarding them randomly. There’s actually one that have been suggested before and it might work out – adjacent passengers in line will be sitting two rows apart from each other, also known as Steffen Method (Steffen, 2014).
Meanwhile, with regards to bad weather, with temperatures dropping, flight cancellations and delays are frequent. The most ideal, for the airplane’s part, is to have alternate routes or build more safety measures to make the aircrafts more capable storms and have thunder rods to absorb thunderbolts or a way to deflect them back. For snows, a system could be built to melt snow midair. For runways, the same could be said, something to melt with other than removing. All the while taking in consideration sufficient fire cover.
As for occasional shortage in baggage handlers, the airline should first and foremost take care of its employees in order to serve passengers efficiently. What creative solution could there be other than start with that first? The idea of fully automating the baggage system through artificial intelligence is also a likeable prospect.
Practically-speaking at present, since nothing is impossible with the future, boarding passengers from front back is seemingly overtaken by boarding passengers randomly in terms of efficiency (the latter is faster) (Hotchkiss, 2017). The Steffen Method, on the other hand, surpassed all other boarding methods. G...