Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Improving Airplane Boarding Time: A Review, A Field Study And An Experiment With A New Way Of Hand Luggage Stowing, Jessica Coppens, Sagar Dangal, Mirte Vendel, Shabila Anjani, Stefan Akkerman, Suzanne Hiemstra-Van Mastrigt, Peter Vink

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The airplane (de)boarding process is not organized optimally. The goal of this paper is to search for improvement possibilities. In this paper literature is reviewed, boarding characteristics are studied in a field study and a pilot study with a new way of hand luggage stowing is performed. Computer simulations indicate that there are more efficient boarding methods than those currently in use, like the reverse pyramid method which starts window seat columns in the back and ends with aisle seat columns in the front. The literature also shows that hand luggage stowing in the overhead lockers can block other passengers …