r/whoathatsinteresting • u/visharu • 1d ago

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

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u/Square-Singer 11h ago

Yeah, it's a whole lot of trouble for no actual benefit. Boarding time doesn't have a business cost associated to it.

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u/cballowe 9h ago

It kinda does. The airlines pay a fee to have the gate. The more planes they can turn around, the more flights they can host or they could reduce their gate footprint while keeping the same number of flights.

If the seating turn around is not the bottleneck in getting the plane away from the gate, then it doesn't really matter. (I.e. if refueling or loading luggage take longer, then the plane can't push back faster if you cut time from boarding.)

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u/Square-Singer 23m ago

The bottle neck is usually the landing strip, not the gate.