WILMA boarding is being used by Lufthansa. They assign boarding groups 1-5 to make it more understandable for passengers and they also assign passengers booked together the same boarding group: Groups 1/2 are priority boarding, 3 is window, 4 is middle and 5 is aisle, but if a family of three is booked together in a row they all get group 3 as they should board together and they'll not have to get up for anyone anyway. Personally, I find this method pretty good but the thing is that I witnessed a lot of passengers who don't understand how the boarding groups are assigned (as they don't tell you) complain about the perceived random boarding process.
The problem with the boarding tests is that they're using the same group of boarders. They're simply getting better at boarding and there could even be confirmation bias in their satisfaction scoring. They probably have a sense that they should score higher depending on how untraditional the boarding method becomes.
No they rate it on how annoying it is, which is why the random method which is very untradational rated lowly thus debunking your reddit neckbeard theory.
as a flight attendant, i can tell u this method works in theory but wont work in real life. People wanna board together, there are families with children, couples, people travelling with elderly parents, and there are also passengers with reduced mobility(wheel chair passengers). Some wheelchair passengers dont even wanna board first because they feel discriminated, hence they want to board with the normal passengers, ending up holding up the traffic in the aisle. Not to mention people who are disorganised and take their time to stow their luggage, or take their seats and then stand up again to take something from the over head compartment again. The best was is to educate passengers on where their seats are, like a diagram at the gate hold room so they know they need to go left or right aisle, and the approximate location of their seats. Each passengers must strictly have only one bag and a small carry on. Your carry on contains the stuff u need when u sit down(charger, book, glasses, medication, food drinks etc). Once you board, everyone only takes up the assigned space in over head compartment, stow their single bags quickly, and then sit down with their small carry on bag and not block the aisle. And also, go to the lavatory before you board the aircraft.
Quite a few airlines, such as Lufthansa, use WILMA but group people who booked together. So First class is group 1, business is 2, Eco window is 3, middle 4 and isle 5 in this setup. and if a couple booked the window and middle seat in a row, they will get to board together in group 3. If a family of 3 booked the entire (or half) row, they all get to book in group 3. If 2 people book middle and isle, they both get to board in group 4. And so forth.
On the lavatory part: each time I've flown I thought it's absolutely astonishing how many people immediately jump up and run to the lavatories as soon as the seat belt sign is off. Mind you those were short/midhaul (3.5h max) flights, like can those people not hold themselves together and/or go to the toilets before boarding? I don't get it.
This is my childhood. Thank you for sharing this after those years and for free. Now when i somewhat learned english, i can understand what you sayin'. In Czech Republic or Czechia, i watch you guys mythbusting everything that you could, but with dubbing and How it's made. I loved to watch these on Discovery Channel CZ.
I never understood priority boarding, have tried it a few times and it's absolutely horrendous. Why would I want to be the first in the hot metal tube, where everybody has to board after me potentially having to brush past me. I would pay extra for an intermediate seat at the gate and someone to tap me on the shoulder when boarding is finished.
Exactly. Paying €50 not to be first on the plane, but to wait half an hour with a glass of champagne in a quiet room where I'll get a text message five minutes before I'm among the last to board.
Well, I think the reason most people rush to board(myself included at times) is the limited available space for cabin bags. If you have a cabin bag that does not fit under the seat in front of you and you board late, there's a chance they will take your bag to the cargo hold. I often fly 100-150km from my actual destination so I need to book a shuttle or a train in that case. Flight delays/waiting for the bag could be the difference between losing my connection. If I dropped my bag at the check-in counter then I probably only have a small accessory with me on the plane and in that case I am one of the last to board, no rush. Unrelated small tip you might find useful at times: If you don't have a checked bag in your ticket, you can still ask them if you can drop off your cabin bag, they will say yes most of the time in my experience. I do that when for example I have a long stopover and I don't want to carry that around and book a luggage storage in whatever city I am for a few hours. Or I could drop it off if at my destination I have 1-2 hours waiting time for a train/shuttle or.. thats enough time to pick it up if no flight delay.
From their youthful faces, this must be from 15 years ago. The boarding looks amazingly realistic. Captain Savage with only 2 stripes? That's a half captain!
They did not mention an important point (probably the most important) why airlines are not interested in doing the most efficient boarding - they want to sell you priority. Every little comfort, every little nice thing, every little advantage in aviation is monitized to hell. They make your economy experience as awful as possible while clearly distinguishing the priority or paid services all along the way. They want you to suffer at each step so 1. on your next flight you want to pay for priority and 2. keep people who are paying see the difference in comfort and priority they are getting still relevant. Remember, airlines are there to make money, not to get you to board fast :D
Aircraft take a certain amount of time to turn around (catering, cleaning, fueling, any potential crew swaps & briefings, any potential maintenance work or checks, lav service, loading and unloading baggage & cargo, etc), so something most people don't seem to consider when talking about different boarding methods is that, for the 95+% of flights that are immediately coming off of another flight, reducing the boarding time doesn't necessarily mean you depart faster, it may just mean you spend more time sitting around in the terminal (and airlines aren't likely to ask you to come to the airport later, either). As someone who has been a gate agent, humans are inherently impatient and seem to psychologically like seeing things progressing and advancing - if we can see that people are boarding, even if it is in fact slower, we're generally happier (and not asking "when is boarding?" "when do we board?" "why aren't we boarding yet?"). This gives other teams time to complete their jobs and turn the aircraft around, and also allows for a margin of error for the cabin crew and gate agents when it comes to things like gate checked bags or ticketing errors. TL;DR: boarding times aren't actually that major of a problem for airline operations
The total turnaround time has no impact on passengers. The only thing that affects them is when they need to show up at the airport relative to the departure time. If the boarding is 10 min faster, they can show up at the airport 10 min closer to the departure time which makes their journey 10 min shorter. It does not make a difference to the passengers how long the plane has been sitting at the gate prior to departure
there's one more thing they should've tried which is done by many low cost carriers across europe: no seat assignment, no boarding groups (apart from priority and common) but boarding through front _and_ back door.
In the companies I've flown with in Europe, I've experienced business/priority boards first then everyone else at random or numbered groups, but entering the plane can happen either from the front door or both the front and the back doors.
My assumption for why airlines don't use the superior WILMA/pyramid methods is that it can divide a group (even temporarily). If there's a 10-year-old kid and adult (or whatever age doesn't meet the adult-and-infant early boarding qualifier), it could be a real problem to split them up for ten minutes; similar issues with a severely disabled person and their carer; and even just when you're travelling with a friend, you might not be interested in the plane saving ten minutes if you could have just spent that time chatting. Add to that the other things that need to be sorted on the plane (loading food, fuel and stowed luggage; weather and traffic delays; etc.) and it might be a net *benefit* to the airline for the passengers to do mindless busywork for a little longer, if the lowest-common-denominator airline passenger screws up less.
@@Dancetothetower Yes, you'd think from the results that WILMA with aforementioned mulligans would be the way to go. Golden Ticket Holder and (special) guests...
@@BertramMoranda no because people who sit together dont clog the hallways you have 3 seats if 2 people sit together they either fill the outer or inner seats if 3 people sit together they fill the whole row the problem is people who sit first and then you must go around them to get to your seat that is still no problem because people who travel together will be at the seat at the same time
The only thing that was missed for this myth test was family groups. Parents would not like to leave their children behind to board alone, ever. Same goes with couples. These passengers should always board the plane together.
With the boarding techniques, Qantas has now started using zone boarding for domestic flights to speed things up, I experienced it a couple months ago and it’s pretty fast, the plane was full within 15 minutes.
@@Jack-he8jv So still the worlds oldest continually operational airline to have never suffered a fatality or full hull loss in the Jet Age? Yeah Qantas customer service may have suffered massively in recent years, but their safety record is still unmatched. I'm just hoping that they keep up their stellar maintenance and training standards to justify their premium tier pricing.
In Europe , on low cost operators at least , the boarding it's made by taking priority passengers (disabled , people with kids or who simply paid for priority , that usually comes with larger cabin bag allowance) and than everybody else. But that applies only on document check at the gate , after that boarding is made either by walking outside terminal building , through the plane park , either using busses. Both the front and rear door are used , passengers are just recommended on the ticket which door to take depending on the seat , nobody is actually checked if they're boarding through the right door. So in both styles of boarding , priority passengers are kind of losing their priority if they are slow to walk or it they sit on the wrong side of the bus (excepting elderly or disabled who are boarded separately). I've never timed how long it's taking , but I would assume it's about 10-20 minutes from the moment the first passenger gets on to the airplane step until the doors are closed and boarding message announced by the stewards , obviously depending also on the citizenship of the passengers , as I saw that some nations are very disorganised , they want to be first on board, but they have huge bags , they don't know their seat etc. I always wondered why airlines are not using the method of boarding passengers in order , in the case of both doors being used , from the middle windows seats towards the ends and isle as I'm quite sure it would save a lot of time.
I’m a pilot in Europe and we have 25 min turnarounds; meaning we deboard, lighty clean the cabin and then board 186 passengers in 25 min. But we also use the aft door.
This is actually why a lot of airlines are using back to front but redesigned. Basically the plane is cut in half and you either board from the front or the back of the plane, making it 2 times faster because it basically the back to front but divided by 2.
Boarding would be much easier if the enforced carry on rules. Every time that I fly, I always see people boarding with too many bags and bags that are far too big. Additionally, they could break up the loading groups into smaller batches while staggering the groups. So, if the sections were numbered 1-6 from back to front, then load 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6. This, hopefully, would reduce back ups.
Hi there! Not an expert, just thinking that the wilma method doesnt allow for families to board together. Might be a problem for parents with kids. If you include them, its soon gonna be grandparents friends and karens wont it?
@@Dancetothetower sure, but that's... most passengers. On a plane with two-seat rows, that's not really much different from just letting everyone board at the same time.
@@zoroark567 yeah but as in the case of two-seats it wouldn't make it slower as both seats would be filled and nobody has to get past. Even with three seats it wouldn't hurt if the window and middle seat are filled at the same time. Only if they are not sitting together and still want to board together it might be a problem but that's going to be a problem in any way you board them.
Ryanair in Europe used to do unallocated seating. First come first serve. It was fast. But universally hated so they scrapped it for allocated seats on checkin
Regarding boarding airplanes. Amazing test - however the passengers are NEVER at the boarding time all together. What leaves to the answer why airlines still use the back to front method. Maybe it's not the more efficient but in the randomness of having passengers reporting at the gate at different times and sometimes not even obeying to the calls (maybe) is still the more efficient
I have never boarded back to front... They always board front first, which is super annoying because the ego of the first and business class passengers always block the aisles. I make an effort to hold up my farts about an hour prior to boarding, so I can let em fly when I shuffle through the first class xD
Don't worry, the airlines have switched to a front-to-back boarding method, to really eek out those meager minutes. Business boarding separately slows it down, especially if they go first. Maybe random-random is better if they are told to board back to front. People want order and structure, but separating children is not fun, random is really the best, and the way they used to do it.
I'd love to see how the Flying Carpet method would compare. In theory it's the fastest by far and groups are not divided. But as far as I know, not a single airline is using that method.
With the European airlines I have flown with in recent years they have had us board from both ends with those sitting in the rear of the aircraft boarding from that end etc.
I wish any plane I have went to used back to front, because it would then remove those assholes who just put their shit bags on the wrong cargo holder, making us having to go to other place to storage our things because somehow, everything is full. That is my main problem, not the time or order, but being able to store my things above where I'm sitting, which so far, none did it right.
This makes me want to build on the airline boarding myth. I kind'a want it done in situ, no heads up, no notices. Just straight up ask the airline to do the WILMA boarding strategy, and hope they say "okay"
I think there are many of things that they did not consider with the plane experiment: - Passengers wanna board together in their travel group. - Passengers with status who get pririority boarding. (Its these passengers who makes the Airlines profits) - Passengers in wheelchairs. - Passengers who are not at the gate when boarding starts. - Passengers who try to board in the wrong group. (Who either needs to be turned away causing delay in scanning tickets or board before they were allowed to) - Making boarding too complicated to understand means low satisfaction.
I have noticed that it’s rare these days to be boarded back to front on an airplane, it’s actually mostly business class + people with children or in need of assistance and then everyone else (sometimes there’s 2-3 zones in there on larger airplanes but the smaller ones definitely just go with random boarding after the priority boarding group)
They forgot to mention WEIGHT AND BALANCE. You can't load a plane randomly. When loading the AFT of the plane with passengers, the ground crew loads the front so the plane doesn't tip back. So it's not accurate.
@@FurnishedIgloo You do know there are tons and tons of flights that don't cross oceans, even lot of flights that would only be couple hours in train.? Right?
I'm not a gun guy, even slightly, but it annoys me that a science show animates a fired bullet with the casing still attached. You dropped a point there Mythbusters.
They’ve done that quite a lot in their episodes, I don’t know if they were being lazy or had limited time or resources to get the right image. To be fair they did say they were often doing 5-6 myths simultaneously, so I feel the latter is most likely.
I think it’s left in there for visualization purposes. Easier to understand for ppl joining midway through (as it’s a tv show) that the tooth is meant to be a bullet.
I've always thought it illogical for airlines to board first class first, other than that they get to sit there and glare at the peasants filing past. If I could afford first class, I'd sit in the poncy lounge till the last minute, then slip on board right before push off. But hey, I also remain seated and read my book (in economy), while everyone hurries to stand up and wait in the aisle on arrival, bumping and grinding and fuming. I've even gotten "who does he think?" looks from doing it! Ha!
The lounges are often less comfortable than real first class seats, not the fake ones they out on small domestic flights. It also gives a dumb reason to pretend the ticket has more value, same with the pre flight drink they provide. It’s a marketing thing. But since most people show up at the gate early because waiting till the last minute is a good way to miss the flight and lose your expensive ticket, it lets those who paid more spend less time sitting in the awful terminal seats or standing around.
@@JohnSmith-op7ls Sounds like bottle service. Not that I've done that, either... (And I'm not saying roulette on boarding, I was talking policy change. As in, last on, first off. Egos be damned?) 🤠😎🤠
@@badad0166 The sense of prestige is part of the marketing. They need everything they can to make it seem worth paying 4-8 times what a coach ticket costs for twice the space and food/drinks that maybe cost $50, $150 max if you’re an alcoholic.
Also on most wide bodies, the first (and business) enter through a different door, so the economy passengers board behind the front cabin so to not walk through the first/business class and disturb the high society xD
Not realistic at all, first of all you should NOT make any sense, or even hear what the desk agent is saying when they start the boarding. Just incoherent mumbling.
the problem is simple... STOP BRINGING YOUR ROLLA BOARD suticases onto the plane for domestic flights. You'll save at least 30minutes in boarding time.
in my country (Turkiye) you can pick to use the back door or the front (sometimes they only open one door) and you pick the door that is closer to your seat. if they added one rule like idk window seats first for ex i think it would be a bit faster but nobody cares that much
Yes, I noticed that on TK, too. They have these signs at the gate to queue based on your row number. But simultaneous boarding from the front and back doors is pretty standard for European low-cost carriers like Ryanair.
Re: Airline boarding - airlines (in N.A. at least) have been trying other systems for many years now - I'm surprised this is posted just 12 days ago. I see a couple of places where this experiment breaks down. First off - your volunteers are actually LISTENING to the announcements and paying attention!! Real passengers - much less so. Secondly, the WILMA doesn't work IRL quite so efficiently as your experiment because people travel in groups and don't want to split up for boarding. A third feature IRL is that many times passengers are making connections and not all sitting attentively in the lounge for their turn. But - all in all - an interesting project. Thanks for posting.
Question. Do airlines actually board back-to-front? I've flown a bunch of times, including transatlantic. Not one airline ever boarded back-to-front, it was always by class and front-to-back. Which was always grand, since I always had to squeeze past imbeciles trying to fit too-large suitcases in the overhead bins.
@@FrostMonolith That might be it. Though I do have to say, my favourite boarding experience was at Frankfurt Airport, connecting flight. They do the usual boarding routine, bigshots with money first etc, but then don't board directly onto a plane, but a BUS taking us to the aircraft. So I, having been one of the last to board the bus due to being tired and not wanting to leave my seat, was one of the first to board the plane. Which raises the question: why bother?
@36:50 why was that guy's immediate reaction to hold out his hands for the woman to vomit into? Wtf? I am finding it hard to think of a situation where my instinct would be to try and catch someone else's vomit. Weird.
he either has kids and is used to trying to stop them from vomiting on furniture/car or works in a medical field where people potentially can get sick but can't go puking on the patient etc xD
As a frequent flyer I have spotted something you not only failed to account for but totally didn't factor in these were all full flights but the system has to work for partial full flights too also there is the whole loading a plane to keep a predictable center of gravity for the plan not even mentioned also safety of the plane totally discounted I'm glad to say airlines put abit more thought into it and also what a American bias to this assumption all airlines do things the same check Europe out for more varied methods certainly the UK domestic market has a wide variety of boarding methods but to not factor passenger safety into a test and If it works for partially full as aswell as full totally makes your research valueless
The reason why airlines choose the back to front seating system is due to weight and balance reasons. While the back of the plane is being filled with passengers, the front is being filled with cargo. With this technique the center of gravity of the plane is kept in the middle of the plane avoiding overloading the back or front of the plane.
Also, the "no assigned seat" method is not doable at all. The pilots need complete data of "who of what weight sits where" so that they can calculate the plane's center of mass.
I think Southwest Airlines have been doing the non assigned seats method for quite some time, if I am not wrong they swapped it with assigned seats not that long ago, but still
Complete nonsense. How can you possibly think that this is the case when weighing individuals before they get on a plane is never, has never been done (it's probably illegal), because that's the only way this would happen. Airlines use average weights of people for the region they're in.
WILMA boarding is being used by Lufthansa. They assign boarding groups 1-5 to make it more understandable for passengers and they also assign passengers booked together the same boarding group: Groups 1/2 are priority boarding, 3 is window, 4 is middle and 5 is aisle, but if a family of three is booked together in a row they all get group 3 as they should board together and they'll not have to get up for anyone anyway. Personally, I find this method pretty good but the thing is that I witnessed a lot of passengers who don't understand how the boarding groups are assigned (as they don't tell you) complain about the perceived random boarding process.
German efficiency at its finest
Yeah I don't know why you even mentioned the last line, no one cares about stupid people and they're always whining.
@@KandiKlover Case in point XDD
Looking back on this and wow it's tough seeing Grant, sadly missed.
Rip
Grant always had a smile on his face, he would never want a frown on yours
What happened to Grant?
@@MyViewToronto sadly, he passed away in 2020 from a brain aneurysm. An incredible human who should have had more time
The problem with the boarding tests is that they're using the same group of boarders. They're simply getting better at boarding and there could even be confirmation bias in their satisfaction scoring. They probably have a sense that they should score higher depending on how untraditional the boarding method becomes.
There is also no kids, no elderly, no drunks, etc..
No they rate it on how annoying it is, which is why the random method which is very untradational rated lowly thus debunking your reddit neckbeard theory.
47:47 I was already waiting for Jamie to not cooperate with the antics but he actually did!!
sameeee, he's a good sport sometimes
Just goes to show, there's a very wry sense of humor under that mustache.
I can't stop laughing looking at Jamie's expression hahaha
as a flight attendant, i can tell u this method works in theory but wont work in real life. People wanna board together, there are families with children, couples, people travelling with elderly parents, and there are also passengers with reduced mobility(wheel chair passengers). Some wheelchair passengers dont even wanna board first because they feel discriminated, hence they want to board with the normal passengers, ending up holding up the traffic in the aisle. Not to mention people who are disorganised and take their time to stow their luggage, or take their seats and then stand up again to take something from the over head compartment again.
The best was is to educate passengers on where their seats are, like a diagram at the gate hold room so they know they need to go left or right aisle, and the approximate location of their seats. Each passengers must strictly have only one bag and a small carry on. Your carry on contains the stuff u need when u sit down(charger, book, glasses, medication, food drinks etc). Once you board, everyone only takes up the assigned space in over head compartment, stow their single bags quickly, and then sit down with their small carry on bag and not block the aisle.
And also, go to the lavatory before you board the aircraft.
Quite a few airlines, such as Lufthansa, use WILMA but group people who booked together. So First class is group 1, business is 2, Eco window is 3, middle 4 and isle 5 in this setup. and if a couple booked the window and middle seat in a row, they will get to board together in group 3. If a family of 3 booked the entire (or half) row, they all get to book in group 3. If 2 people book middle and isle, they both get to board in group 4. And so forth.
@@MrDanielms20 I was gonna say - I flew with Lufhansa not that long ago, and they used WILMA. So ...
On the lavatory part: each time I've flown I thought it's absolutely astonishing how many people immediately jump up and run to the lavatories as soon as the seat belt sign is off. Mind you those were short/midhaul (3.5h max) flights, like can those people not hold themselves together and/or go to the toilets before boarding? I don't get it.
I wonder if some some people pay for extra services and priviledges to have the comfort, or for the feeling having something denied to others...
@@lukasgraesslin They want to take the first shit!
This is my childhood. Thank you for sharing this after those years and for free. Now when i somewhat learned english, i can understand what you sayin'.
In Czech Republic or Czechia, i watch you guys mythbusting everything that you could, but with dubbing and How it's made. I loved to watch these on Discovery Channel CZ.
Happy to see this episode available somewhere since it is not in the DVD box set for some reason
Big Dentistry doesn't want you to know that they manufacture ammunition from all the teeth they pull so they struck a deal with Discovery.
they made it unaval in the US for somereason, thank god for vpns lmao
I miss this show. I remember watching Mythbusters back in the day where my only problems are my assigned readings in college. Good times.
R.I.P Grant Imahara thank you
I never understood priority boarding, have tried it a few times and it's absolutely horrendous. Why would I want to be the first in the hot metal tube, where everybody has to board after me potentially having to brush past me. I would pay extra for an intermediate seat at the gate and someone to tap me on the shoulder when boarding is finished.
i just sit and wait for the others to board... it costs me nothing
Exactly. Paying €50 not to be first on the plane, but to wait half an hour with a glass of champagne in a quiet room where I'll get a text message five minutes before I'm among the last to board.
Well, I think the reason most people rush to board(myself included at times) is the limited available space for cabin bags. If you have a cabin bag that does not fit under the seat in front of you and you board late, there's a chance they will take your bag to the cargo hold.
I often fly 100-150km from my actual destination so I need to book a shuttle or a train in that case. Flight delays/waiting for the bag could be the difference between losing my connection. If I dropped my bag at the check-in counter then I probably only have a small accessory with me on the plane and in that case I am one of the last to board, no rush.
Unrelated small tip you might find useful at times: If you don't have a checked bag in your ticket, you can still ask them if you can drop off your cabin bag, they will say yes most of the time in my experience. I do that when for example I have a long stopover and I don't want to carry that around and book a luggage storage in whatever city I am for a few hours. Or I could drop it off if at my destination I have 1-2 hours waiting time for a train/shuttle or.. thats enough time to pick it up if no flight delay.
From their youthful faces, this must be from 15 years ago.
The boarding looks amazingly realistic. Captain Savage with only 2 stripes? That's a half captain!
They did not mention an important point (probably the most important) why airlines are not interested in doing the most efficient boarding - they want to sell you priority. Every little comfort, every little nice thing, every little advantage in aviation is monitized to hell. They make your economy experience as awful as possible while clearly distinguishing the priority or paid services all along the way. They want you to suffer at each step so 1. on your next flight you want to pay for priority and 2. keep people who are paying see the difference in comfort and priority they are getting still relevant. Remember, airlines are there to make money, not to get you to board fast :D
bro was ready to catch that vomit 36:50
You can tell he's done this before XD
Aircraft take a certain amount of time to turn around (catering, cleaning, fueling, any potential crew swaps & briefings, any potential maintenance work or checks, lav service, loading and unloading baggage & cargo, etc), so something most people don't seem to consider when talking about different boarding methods is that, for the 95+% of flights that are immediately coming off of another flight, reducing the boarding time doesn't necessarily mean you depart faster, it may just mean you spend more time sitting around in the terminal (and airlines aren't likely to ask you to come to the airport later, either). As someone who has been a gate agent, humans are inherently impatient and seem to psychologically like seeing things progressing and advancing - if we can see that people are boarding, even if it is in fact slower, we're generally happier (and not asking "when is boarding?" "when do we board?" "why aren't we boarding yet?"). This gives other teams time to complete their jobs and turn the aircraft around, and also allows for a margin of error for the cabin crew and gate agents when it comes to things like gate checked bags or ticketing errors. TL;DR: boarding times aren't actually that major of a problem for airline operations
The total turnaround time has no impact on passengers. The only thing that affects them is when they need to show up at the airport relative to the departure time. If the boarding is 10 min faster, they can show up at the airport 10 min closer to the departure time which makes their journey 10 min shorter. It does not make a difference to the passengers how long the plane has been sitting at the gate prior to departure
there's one more thing they should've tried which is done by many low cost carriers across europe: no seat assignment, no boarding groups (apart from priority and common) but boarding through front _and_ back door.
In the companies I've flown with in Europe, I've experienced business/priority boards first then everyone else at random or numbered groups, but entering the plane can happen either from the front door or both the front and the back doors.
My assumption for why airlines don't use the superior WILMA/pyramid methods is that it can divide a group (even temporarily). If there's a 10-year-old kid and adult (or whatever age doesn't meet the adult-and-infant early boarding qualifier), it could be a real problem to split them up for ten minutes; similar issues with a severely disabled person and their carer; and even just when you're travelling with a friend, you might not be interested in the plane saving ten minutes if you could have just spent that time chatting.
Add to that the other things that need to be sorted on the plane (loading food, fuel and stowed luggage; weather and traffic delays; etc.) and it might be a net *benefit* to the airline for the passengers to do mindless busywork for a little longer, if the lowest-common-denominator airline passenger screws up less.
you could just make exeptions for them
like people who travel together and sit togeher, can board together
its isnt a unfixable problem
@@Dancetothetower Yes, you'd think from the results that WILMA with aforementioned mulligans would be the way to go. Golden Ticket Holder and (special) guests...
@@Dancetothetower but if you're now building additional exceptions, aren't you going to lose any efficiency advantage you had ?
@@BertramMoranda its still not gonna take 25 minutes like back to front
@@BertramMoranda no because people who sit together dont clog the hallways
you have 3 seats
if 2 people sit together they either fill the outer or inner seats
if 3 people sit together they fill the whole row
the problem is people who sit first and then you must go around them
to get to your seat
that is still no problem because people who travel together will be at the seat at the same time
The only thing that was missed for this myth test was family groups. Parents would not like to leave their children behind to board alone, ever. Same goes with couples. These passengers should always board the plane together.
This is so nostalgic, MythBusters was my childhood
With the boarding techniques, Qantas has now started using zone boarding for domestic flights to speed things up, I experienced it a couple months ago and it’s pretty fast, the plane was full within 15 minutes.
unfortunately it is still a qantas.
@@Jack-he8jv So still the worlds oldest continually operational airline to have never suffered a fatality or full hull loss in the Jet Age? Yeah Qantas customer service may have suffered massively in recent years, but their safety record is still unmatched. I'm just hoping that they keep up their stellar maintenance and training standards to justify their premium tier pricing.
I suppose Finnair uses Reverse pyramid these days since they have boardign groups that doesn't seem to have direct relation to row numbers.
In Europe , on low cost operators at least , the boarding it's made by taking priority passengers (disabled , people with kids or who simply paid for priority , that usually comes with larger cabin bag allowance) and than everybody else. But that applies only on document check at the gate , after that boarding is made either by walking outside terminal building , through the plane park , either using busses. Both the front and rear door are used , passengers are just recommended on the ticket which door to take depending on the seat , nobody is actually checked if they're boarding through the right door. So in both styles of boarding , priority passengers are kind of losing their priority if they are slow to walk or it they sit on the wrong side of the bus (excepting elderly or disabled who are boarded separately). I've never timed how long it's taking , but I would assume it's about 10-20 minutes from the moment the first passenger gets on to the airplane step until the doors are closed and boarding message announced by the stewards , obviously depending also on the citizenship of the passengers , as I saw that some nations are very disorganised , they want to be first on board, but they have huge bags , they don't know their seat etc.
I always wondered why airlines are not using the method of boarding passengers in order , in the case of both doors being used , from the middle windows seats towards the ends and isle as I'm quite sure it would save a lot of time.
i can guess which nations you might be talking about and i dont blame the judgment i totally agree. some people arent as civilized as others
Airlines should definitely use that boarding technique 👌👌 or the second one in satisfaction as well. Both very fast.
Boarding on Norwegian always goes smooth, and fairly fast. 10 to 15 minutes on a full plane usually.
Was this before Southwest did unassigned seating? I'm sure they ran these studies.
0:48 Carrie....*choke!*...🤣
I’m a pilot in Europe and we have 25 min turnarounds; meaning we deboard, lighty clean the cabin and then board 186 passengers in 25 min. But we also use the aft door.
”I walk, wee walk” 😂
37:14 Grant being hilarious 🤣 🤣 🤣
This is actually why a lot of airlines are using back to front but redesigned. Basically the plane is cut in half and you either board from the front or the back of the plane, making it 2 times faster because it basically the back to front but divided by 2.
18:45 captain Savage on his way to new york Circa 2001
hey yooo
I would like to see how to properly deplane an aircraft
17:31 wait a minute… was that Vince Gilligan??!!
7:46 that’s not how bullets fire from firearms lol
its wild how jamie has made "French walrus" his whole personality
Where I am in the gulf, when they did not use a skybridge they directed us front or back depending on where our seats were
So, if I travel with my child, they either have to board without me or stay behind while I board? Yeah, no thanks Wilma.
Boarding would be much easier if the enforced carry on rules. Every time that I fly, I always see people boarding with too many bags and bags that are far too big.
Additionally, they could break up the loading groups into smaller batches while staggering the groups. So, if the sections were numbered 1-6 from back to front, then load 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6. This, hopefully, would reduce back ups.
Hi there! Not an expert, just thinking that the wilma method doesnt allow for families to board together. Might be a problem for parents with kids. If you include them, its soon gonna be grandparents friends and karens wont it?
and there is no way they could make an exeptions for people who travel together and/or need supervision ?
@@Dancetothetower sure, but that's... most passengers. On a plane with two-seat rows, that's not really much different from just letting everyone board at the same time.
I'm sure this method could make the exception of letting the kids board with one of their parents.
@@zoroark567 yeah but as in the case of two-seats it wouldn't make it slower as both seats would be filled and nobody has to get past. Even with three seats it wouldn't hurt if the window and middle seat are filled at the same time. Only if they are not sitting together and still want to board together it might be a problem but that's going to be a problem in any way you board them.
Ryanair in Europe used to do unallocated seating. First come first serve. It was fast. But universally hated so they scrapped it for allocated seats on checkin
Thats called a "cattlewagon" system ... Good enough for drunk sunburnt British cattle going to Spain.
Regarding boarding airplanes. Amazing test - however the passengers are NEVER at the boarding time all together. What leaves to the answer why airlines still use the back to front method. Maybe it's not the more efficient but in the randomness of having passengers reporting at the gate at different times and sometimes not even obeying to the calls (maybe) is still the more efficient
If they ain’t changing their luggage … they already know theirs won’t fit , no?
Fastest and easiest method would be to board from two doors (front and back) instead of only front one.
I have never boarded back to front... They always board front first, which is super annoying because the ego of the first and business class passengers always block the aisles. I make an effort to hold up my farts about an hour prior to boarding, so I can let em fly when I shuffle through the first class xD
RIP Grant.
Don't worry, the airlines have switched to a front-to-back boarding method, to really eek out those meager minutes. Business boarding separately slows it down, especially if they go first.
Maybe random-random is better if they are told to board back to front. People want order and structure, but separating children is not fun, random is really the best, and the way they used to do it.
I'd love to see how the Flying Carpet method would compare. In theory it's the fastest by far and groups are not divided. But as far as I know, not a single airline is using that method.
Not everyone is alone, some flies with two to 3 dependent kids
With the European airlines I have flown with in recent years they have had us board from both ends with those sitting in the rear of the aircraft boarding from that end etc.
Reverse pyramid could work even with families if all the people in the same row boarded when the lowest (window?) zone number was called.
I wish any plane I have went to used back to front, because it would then remove those assholes who just put their shit bags on the wrong cargo holder, making us having to go to other place to storage our things because somehow, everything is full.
That is my main problem, not the time or order, but being able to store my things above where I'm sitting, which so far, none did it right.
Front to back Boarding is super common
This makes me want to build on the airline boarding myth. I kind'a want it done in situ, no heads up, no notices. Just straight up ask the airline to do the WILMA boarding strategy, and hope they say "okay"
I think there are many of things that they did not consider with the plane experiment:
- Passengers wanna board together in their travel group.
- Passengers with status who get pririority boarding. (Its these passengers who makes the Airlines profits)
- Passengers in wheelchairs.
- Passengers who are not at the gate when boarding starts.
- Passengers who try to board in the wrong group. (Who either needs to be turned away causing delay in scanning tickets or board before they were allowed to)
- Making boarding too complicated to understand means low satisfaction.
I have noticed that it’s rare these days to be boarded back to front on an airplane, it’s actually mostly business class + people with children or in need of assistance and then everyone else (sometimes there’s 2-3 zones in there on larger airplanes but the smaller ones definitely just go with random boarding after the priority boarding group)
Yeaaa fr ive been flying on airlines for 20 years and it’s always been that way idk wtf mythbusters was on
Hmm, in Europe we use both front and back entrance, I thought it's like that everywhere.
They forgot to mention WEIGHT AND BALANCE. You can't load a plane randomly. When loading the AFT of the plane with passengers, the ground crew loads the front so the plane doesn't tip back. So it's not accurate.
Random with seats is efficient enough, the time differences are not big and all other methods have their problems
the power up time of the aircraft in front takes 25 minutes anyways, so you would be istting there anyways
R.I.P Jessi Combs thank you
Poor Carrie.... she made 36 bullets, showed 12, and then used 1.
one episode of CGP Grey deals with best boarding methods
Hexagons are the bestagons .
Oh, back to my teen years.
Can anyone tell what the music is at 41:53?
I don't think it's just me but, I have never, not once, boarded in the back to front sequence. I fly fairly regularly. Anybody else?
What the heck did they do with all the building supplies they used once each episode is filmed?
24 minutes to board... imagine if they were traveling by train with 10 entrances all along the train.
I’ll just take that famous train across the Atlantic to Europe then
@@FurnishedIgloo You do know there are tons and tons of flights that don't cross oceans, even lot of flights that would only be couple hours in train.? Right?
@@FurnishedIgloo I don't believe that would work out. Issues regarding terrain may arise.
Sincerely,
--- Earth enthusiast
I saw in a comment from another upload of the episode that plane waiting time is not solely down to passenger boarding, but the luggage loading.
I'm not a gun guy, even slightly, but it annoys me that a science show animates a fired bullet with the casing still attached. You dropped a point there Mythbusters.
it's animators who don't know shit about guns, not mythbusters.
Noticed the same
They’ve done that quite a lot in their episodes, I don’t know if they were being lazy or had limited time or resources to get the right image. To be fair they did say they were often doing 5-6 myths simultaneously, so I feel the latter is most likely.
I think it’s left in there for visualization purposes. Easier to understand for ppl joining midway through (as it’s a tv show) that the tooth is meant to be a bullet.
Oh no! Not a point from some random autist!
How will they ever recover?
I've always thought it illogical for airlines to board first class first, other than that they get to sit there and glare at the peasants filing past. If I could afford first class, I'd sit in the poncy lounge till the last minute, then slip on board right before push off. But hey, I also remain seated and read my book (in economy), while everyone hurries to stand up and wait in the aisle on arrival, bumping and grinding and fuming. I've even gotten "who does he think?" looks from doing it! Ha!
The lounges are often less comfortable than real first class seats, not the fake ones they out on small domestic flights. It also gives a dumb reason to pretend the ticket has more value, same with the pre flight drink they provide. It’s a marketing thing. But since most people show up at the gate early because waiting till the last minute is a good way to miss the flight and lose your expensive ticket, it lets those who paid more spend less time sitting in the awful terminal seats or standing around.
@@JohnSmith-op7ls Sounds like bottle service. Not that I've done that, either...
(And I'm not saying roulette on boarding, I was talking policy change. As in, last on, first off. Egos be damned?) 🤠😎🤠
@@badad0166 The sense of prestige is part of the marketing. They need everything they can to make it seem worth paying 4-8 times what a coach ticket costs for twice the space and food/drinks that maybe cost $50, $150 max if you’re an alcoholic.
Also on most wide bodies, the first (and business) enter through a different door, so the economy passengers board behind the front cabin so to not walk through the first/business class and disturb the high society xD
why would you epoxy the teeth in the casing? they don’t do that with regular rounds lol
36:51 why would he put his hands out 😂
It's wired waching this morning one of then past way
Has any airline changed their passenger loading methods after this?
RIP Grant 🙏🏽
Do passengers using the WILMA method have to abandon their kids for a few minutes until they board?
Its not based off of rows its based off of boarding groups.
Not realistic at all, first of all you should NOT make any sense, or even hear what the desk agent is saying when they start the boarding. Just incoherent mumbling.
RIP Grant
For the record, it doesn't goes "boop", it goes "beep". This is where they failed.
the problem is simple... STOP BRINGING YOUR ROLLA BOARD suticases onto the plane for domestic flights. You'll save at least 30minutes in boarding time.
in my country (Turkiye) you can pick to use the back door or the front (sometimes they only open one door) and you pick the door that is closer to your seat. if they added one rule like idk window seats first for ex i think it would be a bit faster but nobody cares that much
Yes, I noticed that on TK, too. They have these signs at the gate to queue based on your row number.
But simultaneous boarding from the front and back doors is pretty standard for European low-cost carriers like Ryanair.
Re: Airline boarding - airlines (in N.A. at least) have been trying other systems for many years now - I'm surprised this is posted just 12 days ago. I see a couple of places where this experiment breaks down. First off - your volunteers are actually LISTENING to the announcements and paying attention!! Real passengers - much less so. Secondly, the WILMA doesn't work IRL quite so efficiently as your experiment because people travel in groups and don't want to split up for boarding. A third feature IRL is that many times passengers are making connections and not all sitting attentively in the lounge for their turn. But - all in all - an interesting project. Thanks for posting.
The WILMA system has one major flaw. Families. What happens when a child has to board separate from their family.
no. Won’t happen.
Question.
Do airlines actually board back-to-front?
I've flown a bunch of times, including transatlantic.
Not one airline ever boarded back-to-front, it was always by class and front-to-back.
Which was always grand, since I always had to squeeze past imbeciles trying to fit too-large suitcases in the overhead bins.
It has to be a regional thing. I'm sure many countries have different regulations.
@@FrostMonolith That might be it.
Though I do have to say, my favourite boarding experience was at Frankfurt Airport, connecting flight.
They do the usual boarding routine, bigshots with money first etc, but then don't board directly onto a plane, but a BUS taking us to the aircraft.
So I, having been one of the last to board the bus due to being tired and not wanting to leave my seat, was one of the first to board the plane.
Which raises the question: why bother?
Last year on Aerolineas Argentinas it was class + back to front.
@@JF1J Ah, there we go. Thank you for the information, now I'm less confused.
Probably a European thing to not do that.
they should've tried to melt steel beams with kerosene
flight number pi 😂😂
I must say that the setup for the boarding myth is impressive. Nothing was left out that could even just in theory slate the votes into one direction.
@36:50 why was that guy's immediate reaction to hold out his hands for the woman to vomit into? Wtf? I am finding it hard to think of a situation where my instinct would be to try and catch someone else's vomit. Weird.
he either has kids and is used to trying to stop them from vomiting on furniture/car or works in a medical field where people potentially can get sick but can't go puking on the patient etc xD
so Southwest is making a mistake??
Understood, thanks again for your reply.
So many issues in their methods
As a frequent flyer I have spotted something you not only failed to account for but totally didn't factor in these were all full flights but the system has to work for partial full flights too also there is the whole loading a plane to keep a predictable center of gravity for the plan not even mentioned also safety of the plane totally discounted I'm glad to say airlines put abit more thought into it and also what a American bias to this assumption all airlines do things the same check Europe out for more varied methods certainly the UK domestic market has a wide variety of boarding methods but to not factor passenger safety into a test and If it works for partially full as aswell as full totally makes your research valueless
The reason why airlines choose the back to front seating system is due to weight and balance reasons. While the back of the plane is being filled with passengers, the front is being filled with cargo.
With this technique the center of gravity of the plane is kept in the middle of the plane avoiding overloading the back or front of the plane.
Wilma straight seems to be great, but say you are with your spouse, who is next to you, shouldn't he/she come along at the same time?
It's slow because everyone else is stupid than i. I'm the only one who gets to his seat fast and simple!
@37:21, that should of been human ana-hog rather than human analog log🐷
Honestly, there should be a licence for flting commercially. The idiocy I see every time I'm on a plane is shocking.
There are more of them than us!
Also, the "no assigned seat" method is not doable at all.
The pilots need complete data of "who of what weight sits where" so that they can calculate the plane's center of mass.
I think Southwest Airlines have been doing the non assigned seats method for quite some time, if I am not wrong they swapped it with assigned seats not that long ago, but still
This clearly isn't true, unless airlines have started weighing every passenger at check-in?
Complete nonsense. How can you possibly think that this is the case when weighing individuals before they get on a plane is never, has never been done (it's probably illegal), because that's the only way this would happen.
Airlines use average weights of people for the region they're in.
So, did the airlines change anything?
i never was on a plane but i bet that they haven't changed shit
Ticket prices 😂😂😂