You are thinking of a single flight as disconnected from the entire ecosystem - in reality, the gate is occupied, the next flight can't board, cleanup can't take place and probably a half dozen other things I can't think up. And costs go up dramatically if things are already behind.

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

No, you missed the point. Speeding up deplaning won’t help much because of all of the things happening below the passenger deck (unloading baggage, unloading packages, emptying sewage, etc.) and in the cockpit (debrief).

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.

Depends...

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.

Some of the deplaners hold up the next flight they need to board. Airlines could optimize that.

Not really. Airlines can’t make the layovers tighter because the issue is variance in delays, not problems deplaning.

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.

Thanks - you made my point more effectively - one slow deplaning flight could hold up flights for those passengers connecting and the results cascade. Most of those connecting flights are probably with the same airline.

Wont help who much? Maybe as you say throughput wouldn't increase because other things need to happen anyway. But passenger latency would improve and that's valuable.

Why is that valuable ? Would you pay double to deplane 5 minutes sooner ?

It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

> It's not a significant problem for the airline. But for a passenger, staring at people wrangling their bags, blocking those already up with a clear aisle from them to the exit, it's frustrating.

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

If deplaning could be 5% faster without any impact to other factors, it'd be done immediately by all airlines.

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

I dunno, boarding could be much faster if they did window, middle, aisle instead of the random order they do now, and I don't see any airlines picking up that proverbial $20 bill