Assuming most multi-passenger groups feel similarly, and assuming solo business passengers represent only ~40% of the population, the impact of such a system (which would require substantially more passenger discipline/planning) would be pretty limited.

These two things aren't connected (greed and time blocking alsie). the greedy answer is to get comfortable and settled in your bubble, fast.

I am a SW FF, most of the other people on my planes are, and we get it...we move and seat quickly to allow others in. I'm guessing far better average plane etiquette than most other US airline's FFs (though all FFs are likely above average).

While the other airlines are announcing the 15th class of partner airlines rewards members being able to board and everybody's standing around watching, Southwest is loading planes.

But better to assume you'll have a middle seater. If you stay calm it will be okay.

- people with Window seats next to families

- occasions when younger kids have been sat for so long that they're now fidgety and causing a disturbance. With the best will in the world, sometimes physically restraining kids is just going to cause more issues then letting them disembark the plane

- if the family have large items in the overhead storage that needs removing so someone else can get their luggage. By the time you've juggled all that luggage around, the family might as well just join the queue of travellers waiting to exit

It was also mentioned that individuals should not be sat next to families but that doesn't always work when you're trying to fill capacity and/or let travellers pick their own seats (as many flight operators do).

Sadly what is academically optimum isn't always what's practical in the real world. If that were true, there would be a lot of efficiencies the human race could made from road travel to financial savings.

I usually board first with the family (required, I don't have enough hands to hold the baby and put luggages above, and my wife is not tall enough), but whenever possible I leave the plane last. It's relaxing, no one is chasing me, I can grab the bags slowly while preventing my baby from killing some one

The number of people who are traveling with families is not a trivial number of passengers.

- Seat families towards the hull of the plane

- Have them exit last

I don't see a plethora of edge cases here that make this not practical. In fact, this seems very practical to me.

(Note I'm not saying anything about what people on either side of this conflict SHOULD be doing, just talking about how people react to perceived unfairness.)

For sure. But there is a solution to this. The solution is that you and your family should stay seated, and wait a bit, for people behind you to leave.

And then once there is a big enough empty space, THEN you and your family should start getting ready to leave.

Not sure if this is a pun I didn't understand or the most ridiculous autocorrection I've seen in a while.

If you’re getting off with your family you should just wait for everyone else to exit first anyway unless you have a connecting flight with no time margin or something. Families are super slow to deboard planes.

If your kids are young, you should probably be allowed to board first before other travelers.

A column by column rule wouldn’t apply to you either way.

Column by column would never work. Most people like leaving together with their friends and loved ones who are sitting next to them, regardless if they are families with children.

Uhh, no. First of all, we aren't slow, second kids have tiny bladders and third when did childless folks become such fragile babies?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Very small kids have diapers. Planes have bathrooms.

> when did childless folks become such fragile babies?

Huh? I have a 10 month old and a 3 year old. I am offering advice based on my personal experience.

It’s a lot more pleasant for both us and everyone else if we wait for faster groups to clear out first. After sitting on a plane for 2–12 hours, waiting an extra 5 minutes is not a big deal.

> Very small kids have diapers. Planes have bathrooms.

I have a 5 and 9 year old and fly regularly. I don't know if you've considered the amount of time that can elapse from seat belt sign on for landing to deplaning. Nevermind a turbulent flight.

And trying to use the bathroom at the rear of a plane that just arrived isn't really going to smooth the deplaning process.

But like I said, my family is not slowing anyone down, we're usually faster because we're ready and the adults organized the kids while we waited for our turn.

What’s new is that they also just don’t care.

Or as others call it - "common courtesy"

I don't have children but I can understand that parenting is stressful enough as it is. Why go about making it worse for them?

I’m not pushing anything into anyone. But just try to push me aside because I have kids!

My kids have just as much right to public spaces as anyone else. If it offends you that the kid acts in a way befitting a kid that’s your problem.

This of course means that I'm currently pretty sure that most _parents_ don't get it and that the commitment is lost on _them_.

But I'm also sure that they aren't doing anything wrong by having kids, it's just that it aligns with a value we share to not, ever, be a problem for other people. This trickles down into as fine-grain things as walking efficiently in public so that others aren't bothered and running into you and spending countless hours helping people out with without any reciprocation. So when you do encounter a whirlwind-family in public where the parents do not care about affecting others negatively it's unfortunately easy to become judgmental.

It’s a bit late for that; you’ve already gone through infanthood, toddlerhood, and childhood and benefitted from the patience and generosity of more strangers than you will ever know. Now you imply that perhaps parents and their children should try to not affect others negatively. I think by and large they do, but to the extent they do affect others this way, you owe some debt of patience, and are you so sure it’s paid off?

That's the thing though. I don't think children are born with a debt to their parents or to society that they have to pay off. Now I don't go around complaining about people with kids, and just wanted to add that there are people who could have a general dislike for things being annoying or 'in the way' which could include children (or rather their parents, I don't think it's fair to put any responsibility on the children). I have a friend with with ASD that gets extremely upset with any disturbances, and who have posted more than a few rants about parents 'not controlling their kids' online, but in his case those posts are not unique to children, but without that context they read as if written by someone tho specifically dislikes kids.

I don't think children by and large have a negative effect on families and the individuals around them (if we are trusting parents, not happiness-studies) and they do have a beneficial effect on society (more people, more taxes, more welfare and happiness for the population), it's just that I don't want to create a person, that _I_ would owe a great life. The idea of viewing children as owing anything to their parents or to society before being able to make decisions for themselves as an 'ancestral sin' (original sin?) is something I feel very uncomfortable with.

Now, the thinking that the child who has no say about being brought into existence has a debt and saying it's a bit late to opt out implies that I (and other people) should have ended it in infancy to avoid this debt, and to gain the right to want things to not be annoying, but I am also pretty sure that it's a completely unreasonable expectation and doubtfully even a biologically possible decision. The consequences of that view seem awful both morally and ethically, thought I think few people spell them out.

But yeah, I don't dislike kids, but I understand someone going on a rant about them being annoying either because they don't know how hard it is or because they view themselves as not impacting others in the same way and wanting others to share their values. But I don't agree that it can be dismissed with a statement like this

> They just don’t get it. The totality of the commitment is lost on them. > What’s new is that they also just don’t care.

I’ll complain that I hate people. But you know what? I’m the one with the problem. Not them. They have every right to be and do as they please. If I don’t like crowds, I can easily avoid them by doing my errands some other time.

Point is, we cannot have society change it self to accommodate every whim. Your friend is ASD, it sucks but that’s just the way his (our) life is.

But, people do not have every right to be and do as they please in public. We have norms and laws and they can change and do vary. There are a lot of limitations specifically on being loud.

There is almost NOTHING you can do with an absolute guarantee in this world: You can't even drive down the road with an absolute guarantee that you won't end up having a stroke and killing few people. IOW - this is the true scotsman equivalent of justification. The idea here is that smart, empathetic and introspective folks have children and in turn raise smart, empathetic and introspective kids, thereby tilting humanity towards enlightenment. I look at it as my part to move humanity forward (the other part being me doing my best to provide for them AND ensure my own life has meaning as well). IOW I don't buy this reason - it sounds like perfection blocking reality to me.

> and that the ethical thing to do is to when able (SO finishing education) adopt a child in need to improve their lives.

It is awesome that folks adopt: Those kids do need a home. It may even be an ethical thing to do. BUT that doesn't make having your own kid unethical. As I mentioned before, I do believe you have an ethical commitment to move humanity forward as well. Ending your own gene branch just because there are other branches you could take care of is not an alternative: It is more of an orthogonal thing. IOW foster as many kids as you can. I don't buy that it is a replacement to not have kids, especially considering the argument above. If you can't foster, you can always contribute as well to foster care systems in your country.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Especially please don't take HN discussion further into generic flamewar, i.e. replacing a smaller particular topic with a larger and even more flamey one. That always has bad effects.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Correct. People have children, this is functionally why society structures persist. It is entitlement, and deservedly so. Raising children is a hard task. We should make accommodations for those who choose to do so, and avoid arrogance or anger because we chose / could not have them ourselves.

But not be willing to pay a few quid for all of them to sit together, yet expect other passengers to move in order for them to do so...

However, some stuff flight companies do are incredibly helpful (e. G. Allow us to board first) and make everyone 's experience better.

Unfortunately it's either that, or have no kids, or never fly (for some people this means: never meet your family again). All things that are limiting for a human being that should get a decent quality of life (culture and such)

That's a bit of a red herring to the conversation, and I'm a bit confused why that is the filter you choose to engage rather than policy for ensuring proper nutrition, UBI, or any other economic impact, or why my non-response intra-sentence to your comment online is a purity test for said support.

But taking a step back, even if parents are individually genetically biased towards their brood, that doesn't impact that part of a society's very essence and existence is to ensure children grow to adulthood. Eusociality and all that.

We could make things better, and it would require maybe not having your kids in particular at the front of the line. That doesn't mean society is absolutely thwarting your endeavor to be a good parent; it's a recognition that while children are important, they are not the only, nor the altogether and at all times, primary concern of civilization. I mean, if you want to define human nature solely by the effort to advance one's progeny... I mean, even then, you have to admit that the well-being and conceens of the adults who support that effort are also important. Evolution is the process of surviving the day, serially.

I find that being sleepless and being hungery affects my mood a lot, I believe these are things that families can have a hard time regulating, so my bar for the expected behaviour from families is set a lot lower than for young adults. Just because I know they have a hard time.

Sure obnoxious people get families too so there is always a chance that they really are entitled.

Well, the simple answer on a societal level is "your peaceful retirement depends on people having more kids".

If you have a legitimate reason to get off so fast that you can't wait, convince a flight attendant. They're great at helping you.

Otherwise, I suggest maybe buying your own plane.

Because it is a cultural and societal phenomenon. In different cultures it might be different.

> That's quite entitled.

Sure, and on paper could swing the argument either way. But in practice arguing with the airline staff about not letting the families with young children board or disembark first, just doesn't work well and gets you a lot of dirty looks.

One day you will be older and a little less capable than you are today and I hope people don’t hesitate to offer you help and patience when you need it.

Only by ignoring this context could one conclude that deplaning efficiency for single people is the priority.

Maybe not encouraging more children isn’t a bad thing.

   Give me speed, or 
   give them death!

/s

Ryanair has now accustomed Europeans to travel separately from their family, so it wouldn't surprise me to see that requirement change if it drops the price.

The staff know that getting everyone back into the correct seats will take a massive effort, so don't bother.

I strongly prefer aisle seats. I once had a girl ask me to switch seats with her so that she could sit next to her boyfriend. Since she had a middle seat, I politely declined, explaining that I would only switch with another aisle seat. She proceeded to throw a fit, calling me an asshole, etc, etc. I paid extra (how have we even come to this?) to be able to pick my seat, I'm not going to give it up for free.

Don't let people bully you.

If the local authority (flight attendants) won't back you up, you are at the discretion of whoever is hogging your seat. Any display of power over the other usually amounts to potentially being able to resort to violence if necessary to back up your power. The person in the seat know full well that you cannot do that without being forced to leave the plane, so they have effectively nothing to fear from you.

Haven't been on a Ryanair flight for a while but this certainly didn't seem to be the case when I was flying with them regularly. Was this something that's changed very recently or maybe it's only certain routes this happens on?

Parent A flies without child on Day 1; Child is given to airline by Parent B on Day 2 and retrieved on the other end by Parent A. Parent B flies without child on Day 3.

If you're upset about the money wasted on extra tickets, that's a wealth complaint not a childcare complaint.

https://www.faa.gov/travelers/fly_children/

The benefits are that your kid is then in an environment they are familiar with and they can’t just wiggle out. The downside is that you now have to lug around a car seat in the terminal. Ours got stuck in an X-ray machine once. That was fun.

I assume that’s still possible, it’s been a while since we had to travel like that.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/useful-info/travelling-with-ch...

Nobody listened.

Nobody listened.

I find myself with a case of both sider-ism on this. One the one hand (the hand that really should win out), we should all be able to act as decent empathetic people with the instruction following capabilities of a 7 year old when the situation dictates. But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

I never understood this. What exactly would you have airlines do? They don’t operate on massive margins. Ticket prices are the lowest or nearly the lowest they have ever been. You should blame the cheapness of the general populace for encouraging the squeezing of every last penny in ticket prices that results in the explosion of the 28” legroom budget airline market. You’re not entitled to air travel. Don’t like the (lack of) space? Pay for business or first class where the airline actually makes a profit. In the meantime, you better damn well listen to the flight crew’s instructions.

>But on the other hand, when you treat (and pack) your customers like a bunch of damn cattle, don't be surprised when they act like a bunch of damn cattle.

I find a 5 hour flight more comfortable than 3 hour sporting event on an aluminum bleacher.

I'm 197 cm (between 6'5" and 6'6") and not only it's totally impossible for me to stretch my legs under the front seat, but in some airlines there is just no position for me in standard economy seats that won't physically hurt. When I fly for leisure, I pay to get more legroom, or just don't go. But since when I fly for work some silly regulations prevent me from paying for extra legroom, the first day after a longish flight I typically walk around limping.

I am 6'8" and had the same issue with my employer - as a cost-cutting measure it was decided that anybody but C-level would fly economy, period.

A quick visit to my doctor (who, I should add, is 6'6" or so and as such understands the issue) resulted in a letter stating that physical discomfort aside, there was a very real chance that I might develop health issues from spending a few hundred hours[0] a year in such a cramped position - deep vein thrombosis most notably.

Problem solved. No way they were going to risk acting against medical advice and later be confronted with it.

Short haul I couldn't care less where I sit, but if I am to stay in a seat for several hours, it had better be reasonably comfortable.

[0] At the time, this was not an exaggeration.

What flights are you taking? Usually knees are touching/almost touching the seat in front of you. There's absolutely no way to stretch your legs under that seat. You can only wiggle your legs sideways.

This in low cost carriers on Europe, so I know what I'm buying and like it this way. I wouldn't pay extra for legroom unless flight time starts creeping to four hours.

In that scenario, I put the bag on the tray, bear hug it, and drop right off. Leaning forward into the bag works for me.

(Yes, I have a huggable bag, and I have one of those thin blankets I mooched from Delta years ago.)

I really feel for the folks 6'7" and over tho. I have just about an inch of slack when I sit down on a Delta flight, so I imagine beyond that would be pretty uncomfortable. Also, I resolved not to fly on Air Asia any more because they seem to leave a lot less room even than our Western LCC flights.

IMO _how_ you treat the "cattle" (as a commenter in this thread referred) is the deciding factor. Some flight crews have a solid leader or two who can really command the respect/fear of the passengers' collective psyche. Like that strict but good teacher you may have had in middle school who ran a tight ship.

Some flight crews are meek and/or too drained give a flying f*.

The idea that someone might die because people cannot just listen is somewhat scary.

The crew left the seatbelt sign on, and paramedics in uniform boarding meant everyone got the message.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/mcgee/2019/0...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_1492#Evacuatio...

I think that's the difference. Once one person behaves poorly, others interpret that as permission to also be a jerk so it's "fair".

Out of curiosity, what airports was the flight between?

Now friends sometimes end up in different seats, and you can probably get away with waiting somewhere, maybe on the plane itself to meet up, but if everyone is in the same boat it might be chaos to do that, and there is more incentive for airport staff to stop you.

Airports have waiting areas between arrival gate and passport control, probably precisely to let passengers traveling together catch up with each other. Even the worst possible airport would have a bathroom, and toilet entrances are implicitly a waiting (queueing) areas.

Unfortunately, introducing any sort of rigid structure and order into airplane disembarkation process sounds like an impossible task.

Families, friends, couples are not going to go for your rule that one of them should get off first and the other should wait for the entire rest of column to leave.

How about just trying to be more patient? Find something to distract you and those 1 - 3 minutes will be over in a moment.

My ideal plane de-boarding strategy would be to separate everyone in a few groups depending on priorities (people with connecting flights, people without stowed luggage, ...) and mostly make sure that the ones that have to go down earlier do it.

However, you can't start boarding until a certain point and from there until the plane leaves the gate, a lot of resources are locked.

I'd say deplaning quickly is about as important as boarding.

Getting passengers off quickly won’t help speed up the general post-flight process much. It’s very rare that the bottleneck is waiting for the cabin to be cleaned.

On a commuter flight with a 10-20 minute turn around time, deplaning speed is definitely relevant. Not many bags are being checked anyways, and the next set of passengers is already in line waiting to board.

On any flight > 1.5 hours or on a plane bigger than a 737, your point holds. On a 11 hour international flight via a 777, deplane speed is really unimportant at all.

Also, the US airlines will not hold a flight due to a delayed inbound unless it’s got a shitload of the passengers. I’ve seen Delta depart on time and cause 10 passengers on a delayed flight to miss by only 15 minutes.

Sure, but to airlines, that's a revenue opportunity, not a problem.

Just consider the knock-on effects in terms of flight on-time % for subsequent legs on a multi-leg flight.

It's a traffic jam where those closest to the door get there first, not anything ordered.

The seats at the front of the plane cost more money. The airlines want everyone who didn’t pay extra to suffer a little to encourage them to pay more next time.

By your logic, why not add an additional mandatory thirty minute waiting period to deplane? After all, it's amazing that we can fly.

It's not a preference, it's a realization that this is a human problem and you're never going to get full compliance from a large group of people who all move at different speeds, have varying amounts of luggage, varyings levels of selfishness, and various other factors that affect deplaning speed.

This whole comment thread seems to be full of single tech bros that are mad they can't get off the plane faster, and are trying to design "solutions" and "algorithms" to make it faster, all while assuming every other passenger is also a single person who can deplane as fast as them.

> By your logic, why not add an additional mandatory thirty minute waiting period to deplane? After all, it's amazing that we can fly.

Because that's contrived and fucking stupid, whereas humans being slow and selfish in a cramped environment is a natural cause of delay.

> This whole comment thread seems to be full of single tech bros that are mad they can't get off the plane faster, and are trying to design "solutions" and "algorithms" to make it faster, all while assuming every other passenger is also a single person who can deplane as fast as them.

You've clearly only read a fraction of the comments if you think that no one's thinking about (eg) family boarding and deplaning. And "tech bro" is a pretty reliable tell for "I'm hopelessly out of depth when it comes to comprehending this conversation".

[1] This isn't quite a knock on airlines themselves; the economics of the industry leads to bizarre incentives.

I have a better idea: people should have to go through qualification testing to see how fast they can grab their backpack out of the bin and start walking down the aisle. Fast people should get special dispensation, and slow people should be required to leave last. The problem is that too many people bumble around and take forever to do a very simple task.

On flights more 2 hours (so 6/9/14 hour flights) I'll put on the provided slippers and store my shoes in the overhead bin so my feet have more room. I usually travel with a backpack and a satchel, but my sound cancelling headphones take up a lot of space in my satchel, so before landing I'll put them back in my backpack. I usually have to go to the bathroom anyways before landing, so it isn't an extra get-up-out-of-seat-and-into-aisle-operation.

Yesterday I saw someone get up to access the bin 4-5 times in a 14 hour span. They were conviniently short enough so that they didn't have to get out of their seat (just had to stand on it) to access the bin.

I routinely travel with just a backpack that fits under the seat in front of me (packed for 3-5 days).

There is no (legal) way to make the passengers disembark orderly...

This also has causes problems with weight balance - I've been on flights before where the attendants asked the back 10 rows to disembark first because otherwise the plane would nose up too much as the front lightened, and leave a gap between the door and the stairs.

Interesting engineering challenge to design those seats. Perhaps leave the armrests and use a wormwheel to make the seats narrower is easier to implement. Could be hilarious if engaged while people are sitting in them.

Edit: looks like my memory is poor...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/theres-...

Doesn't Southwest do that?

Once you start boarding, each person can sit in any seat that s/he wants.

It does perplex me when I travel to other countries and experience complicated systems with boarding groups etc. that never seem any better than the random method!

That cramped aisle after everyone who could possibly get up did get up is damn uncomfortable, and those tiny seats get a lot roomier after my neighbors got up.

My working hypothesis is "irrational herd behavior".

I'd welcome any insights.

You really can’t feasibly make people do this on the way out even if it would work.

Other people don't care if you exit faster or slower, they only care to exit as soon as possible.

There is no tangible reason to fight for having everyone exit at the shortest possible time so nobody simply does it, why should they ?

Disembark all of First class first, as it will have a different sparring and they paid more.

For the remaining rows start with modulus = 0, then 1, then up to (sparring) N - 1. Dequeue those rows in parallel in N waves.

The real issue would be compliance, not comprehension.

That's why I'm saying "good luck"

Those "equations" don't account for human factors like families traveling together, elderly who need help getting their luggage down, or a sick passenger.

You can't just throw out some mathematical solution to the problem and consider it solved, so what on earth were _they_ talking about?

The obvious exception is to make the kids just move when the adults do (clustering on the largest unit of adults).

However this is more like a 'family exception' than a back of the napkin description of the algorithm.

My 2-bit idea is that we let passengers with no overhead luggage board and exit first. Let those who want to move at glacial speed do so, without slowing everyone else down.

Being polite is what ends up slowing everyone down. (the same is not true for boarding. Back to front outside columns to inside columns would be far faster)

If you have front and back door exits, the same would happen, but row-by-row would start from the middle of the plane.

We do row-by-row because we intuitively think that people closer to the exit should be able to get to the exit faster, even though this isn't really the case.

Tickets in a cabin vary greatly in price on many airlines according to several independent variables including: seat location/quality; degrees of flexibility (changeable vs non); refundable vs not; hold baggage included vs not; singles vs returns; currency used (cash vs frequent flyer currency); earnings in frequent flyer scheme; point to point vs connecting; point of sale country; ... there are probably more.

Seat 34F does not cost more than seat 35F.

What everyone else is saying is that the person in seat 34F likely did not pay the same as the person in seat 35F (since they purchase at different times and the airline continuously changes prices), whereas what you are claiming is that 34F and 35F cost the same for the same person.

I really don't understand why people on this forum don't understand this and why I have to spell it out in such explicit detail. It's self-evident.

Even worse, this means that, if the people in 34F and 35F purchased their tickets at different times, they could have paid different prices, but that doesn't tell us anything about which seat cost more. Either person could have paid more, depending on when they bought their ticket and how the airline adjusted pricing during that time. So, as I've been saying all along, there's no difference in value between those two seats, by virtue of their location on the plane.

The legroom and recline is all the same within the same section, except for the exit rows.

As I said, the price you paid for your seat may and often will vary from that paid by the person next to you by factors including purchase time, seat "quality" (which includes location), extra features such as legroom & recline, spikes in demand, etc.

I'm stating the simple - and well-known - fact that the price paid by the person in 17C (aisle) can be quite different from that paid by the person in 17D (also aisle).

I flew over 150 legs last year. Premier status on three different airlines.

Please stop with the ad hominen attacks and learn something about this market.

The original claim was "We do row-by-row because, generally, people with higher status and/or fares sit closer to the front".

Everything you've written does not support this claim at all. Maybe you should learn something about reading comprehension.

"The fares are exactly the same in the entire section of the cabin"

Which is simply put, completely false.

My response was: "The fares (on most airlines) are absolutely not the same throughout an entire section"...

Maybe you should learn something about logic and argumentation.

Are tickets differently priced at different times? Yes. Any idiot knows this: the airlines change prices over time to extract more money from last-minute buyers. This isn't what I was talking about, and it's obvious that's not what I was talking about, so if that's the basis of your argument, then you're a pedantic asshole.

The last flight I took, the attendants kept the first 3 bins on both sides closed to allow late front people a place to put their bags. Still people kept opening the bins trying to put a bag in when it wasn't their section.