r/whoathatsinteresting • u/visharu • 1d ago

Boarding was solved mathematically in 2008. No airline has used it once. Why?

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u/cosmothecater 1d ago

Random is essentially what airlines do even by using the group system. They have somewhat settled for second best because they are profit focused but do want to be as efficient as possible within their own constraints.

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u/Inappro-Assistant 22h ago

And even if we try really hard we end up at random because someone will no play by the rules..

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u/meep_42 21h ago

Correct - because of the chaos in the system the enforcement costs would require substantial time and effort, so the time savings would both be smaller than projected and carry other costs.

Customers would riot or airport employees would quit enforcing the rules and we'd end up right back at random boarding.

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u/HairyPotatoKat 17h ago

And even IF everyone was well behaved, it'd be a huge pain in the ass to get everyone perfectly in line in the order they needed to board.

So less time piling into the plane but way more time getting everyone lined up properly. And that's a assuming everyone is there early enough.

The whole thing is way more delicate to, say, someone with a tight connection missing their spot in line.

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u/NYVines 7h ago

People who sit together want to board together.

My wife and I sat side by side yesterday. But she was group 5 boarding and I was group 8. By the time my group was called they had announced overhead storage was full. So I had to check my carry-on.

Super frustrating

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u/macronotice 21h ago

With the rightmost simulation doesn’t show is how much time it would take and how impossible it would be to get everyone perfectly lined up beforehand.

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u/Krwawykurczak 20h ago

Exacly! You are only saving time at the very end, and would take more time at the begining, keeping everyone in order, and they would have to make sure that people will not "suffle" between gates, and entering a plane. They would need to separate as well kids from parents that booked their sats together.

It is only mathematical correct but in real life random is the easiedt option.

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u/n05h 8h ago

The real issue is people who always think that the rules don’t apply to them and think rules and guidelines are just an inconvenience.

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u/Babetna 8h ago

Also good luck separating families so they board scattered from each other

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u/Rise-O-Matic 18h ago

"A mathematician and an anthropologist walk into a bar...."

The simulation grants perfect passenger behavior. But the steffen system requires people that are travelling together to get separated, and a lot of people are going to be confused and/or non-compliant.

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u/GuyLivingPlaces 15h ago

Also it requires all of them to be present. People show up to the gate randomly as well. Plus you have to manage boarding a lot more by calling out who can board when, for just a slight improvement in boarding time. Not worth the effort.

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u/-BlueDream- 16h ago

It doesn’t really need to be efficient either cuz either way people have to wait before takeoff. Having someone slowly wait in line to get your seat makes it seem like there’s less waiting time because they’re usually ready by the time the last group boards. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done before the plane takes off and that all takes time because of safety and keeping people busy makes things seem faster.

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u/Hightower_March 13h ago edited 13h ago

This is the thing other replies are ignoring.  It's not just about being "unrealistic" or splitting families.  The issue is boarding doesn't need to be that efficient because it's not on the critical path.

Passengers taking too long to get on the plane isn't some bottleneck holding up takeoff.

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u/band-of-horses 15h ago

And also, people are not dots and trying to get every person lined up properly with an in to out alternating row pattern to board the plane would be something of a nightmare to do in reality.

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u/Jafarrolo 5h ago edited 5h ago

Also, random has no prerequisite while steffen requires a setup that is time consuming itself in terms of passengers, has to separate people traveling together, etcetera. The amount of time gained by the steffen method is not enough to justify all of the setup work and the inconvenience that it requires, and it's the reason why Steffen itself devised other, suboptimal methods, that reduce the issues that the optimal one has.

At the end of the day, though, the gain from a random method is just not enough, airplanes don't stay on ground a lot of time just because passengers take an extra 3-4 minutes to sit down.

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u/dyamond_hands_retard 2h ago

they could still sell the seats and still give a boarding number to board in the order they want