4
What's the fastest method of boarding an airplane?
This final note, which hits home with yours truly after a particularly gruesome boarding experience yesterday at Kennedy Airport coming home from New York. A guy named Jason Steffens has apparently also had the same displeasure, and decided to do something about it. Catch is he's an astrophysicist, not a radio guy -- so his plan works.
Forget boarding by rows, or inside-outside, or front-to-back. The way to do it, Steffens says, is alternating rows. That gives people time and space to stuff their bags in the overhead without jamming up the aisles.
There's more to it, and a video courtesy of our friends at WBEZ.
I'm a single mom who has taken her babe along on at least 4 roundtrips per year since he was 3 months old. The only time I have ever boarded first is on a very recent SWA flight that was oversold. On the way up we had gone through the aisles one-by-one, asking people to move so my now-8-yr-old son and I could sit together, until someone did.
But if seats are assigned, there is nothing in this world that could convince us to give up the extra playtime in the terminal to extend the time cooped up in a very small space. The result, of course, is that we have to hunt for space to stow our bags--mamas carry lots of stuff, so it takes a while to find a place to stuff it.
Why not find a way to reserve stowage space for parents without putting the pressure on kids that boarding early brings?
BTW, I have often observed looks of trepidation on fellow travelers' faces as we board. Even more often, he is praised by strangers who proclaim him "good as gold" or use some other superlative to express their gratitude that he didn't mess up their flight. He's a good traveler.
