Both Bryan Caplan and David Friedman think the purpose of boarding pass numbers is to get the people on the plane more quickly. They both want the people in the back to get on first.
They are surprised that the last row doesn’t board first. This would seem to speed up the boarding process. (Though maybe not.)
This reminds me of my students telling me that it’s stupid for Fedex to send all packages to Memphis (or some other hub). Fedex knows that when a package goes from Fairfax, Virginia to Richmond, Virginia via Memphis, it is traveling farther than if the package went directly. Evidently, there is some other saving that is obvious to them and not obvious to us. For the answer, go here and listen at the 25 minute mark.)
They used to board in reverse order (last rows first) on almost every airline. One problem was monitoring. People would cheat and board before their row was called.
But I doubt that was the only problem. The reason I say that is that Southwest never did it that way. Southwest let people board in groups and the groups were unrelated to your seat. Your group just determined where you sat. And then I noticed other airlines started copying Southwest. They had boarding "groups" that were unrelated to where your seat was.
Southwest has thought about this more than Bryan or David. They have a lot of money at stake. So there is something else going on. What is it?
It even gets weirder because now Southwest has people board in order within the groups. So if your boarding pass says A10, you board before someone who is A25. It used to be all the As just lined up and an A25 could board before an A10 if the A25 was eager enough. Now you can’t, or at least you’re not supposed to.
Why?
Why would it benefit Southwest to have people line up like that? And why might it benefit travelers? The Southwest method would seem to punish travelers. When other airlines were calling out "Rows 25-28 can now board," Southwest induced eager passengers who wanted to make sure there was luggage space for their carry-on (or who wanted to make sure they got an aisle or a window) to stand or sit on the floor rather than remaining in their seats in the lounge. That discomfort lowered the well-being of Southwest customers. That lost well-being cost Southwest something.
One answer (I first saw this at Vox Baby) is that Southwest passengers arrive earlier and are less likely to miss their flight or delay a flight as people board at the last minute. At Southwest, you get there early to get a decent seat. Fewer late flights means more cost savings for everybody either in time or lower fares.
But I think there is another reason given Southwest’s new system of precise ordering within each group. The basic idea is simple–now it gives everyone an incentive to get their boarding pass early. That in turn gives Southwest information. Why is this valuable? I’m not sure. Perhaps it gives them more info on whose likely to travel rather than cancel. Because now, it’s not just enough to get your boarding pass by say midnight the night before. Now people are careful about getting their boarding pass 23 hours and 59 minutes before the flight. Now the earlier the better.
The other possibility is that this gives Southwest a chance to make money. Southwest now has some premium service that lets you pay a little extra and guarantee that you’re in the first ten people on board. (You also get a free drink). Peace of mind for those folks who are anxious about luggage space or getting an aisle seat. More money for Southwest. Maybe lower fares for everyone or at least higher profits for Southwest.
Southwest knows more about its business than you do. If it looks like madness, there is probably a method in it.
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From my understanding, the new system for Southwest is twofold:
1) People didn't like having to get to the airport super-early to sit on the floor.
2) The numbering system reduces complaints over "who was where", or "I was saving my space with my bag", and the inevitable cries to gate agents to sort it out.
Do they know what they're doing? Well, Southwest consistently has some of the fastest gate turn-around times in the business, so I'd say they've got a handle on it.
Hmm – seem to recall that the best way to
"pick products in a warehouse" is randomly – I can't find the link to the study but perhaps the same is true for boarding airlines.
It might be best if small groups boarded at the same time, and these groups were spread across the airplane, then the next small group, etc.
>> "Southwest knows more than we do"
They might know more than we do, but certainly not more than Chaz Schumer?!
I like this post. Showing respect for the people who are working on the ground and watching how they do things almost always leads to interesting observations.
Here's my conjecture: the problem is with the sorting that needs to go on on the plane. If you assign seats, then there's a bottleneck whenever a person seated towards the front needs to put stuff away in front a person seated toward the back. Southwest's method of assigning groups but leaving the exact seat unassigned results in fewer bottlenecks during the seating process because most people will just grab the first seat toward the front of the plane. There is no net difference in time between seating everyone from back to front and seating everyone from front to back — it's the bottlenecks that slow things down.
It's weird that economists never simply ask people for the answers to such questions.
Economists much prefer to throw all of the "tools" in the formal "tool box", and they seem to accept these as the "best" answers, and who cares what what real people have figured out who knows how, using all sorts of odd contextual knowledge, and involving who knows what curious learning path. And of course, just asking people wouldn't be "science", while formal play with the "tool kit" of course is SCIENCE.
Perhaps this is why economists hold a death grip on their formal "tool box" and don't much appreciate or understand the insights of Hayek.
Southwest Airlines passengers for years lined up 30 to 60 minutes prior to flight departures in order to ensure they got their preferred seat. Few people like middle seats, unless traveling with someone else. Some customers liked the "cattle call" boarding process, but most didn't, as Brad Warbiany pointed out above.
Southwest Airlines now allows customers to obtain a place in line as early as 24 hours before departure. No more cattle lines. Customers are free to lounge in chairs until the boarding process is started, as they always could at other airlines. Southwest invested many millions upgrading the seating at its gates in order to further improve the pre-boarding process.
Southwest's new Business Select fares offer four benefits to the business travelers the airline is hoping to attract:
- fully refundable fares
- guaranteed Group A seating, eliminating the need to watch the clock in order to check in exactly 24 hours before departure;
- extra Rapid Rewards credit;
- a free drink onboard.
Southwest has no plans to match its competitors offerring first and business class seating and airport lounges. But these steps will eliminate some of the disadvantage the company suffered in the lucrative business traveler segment.
Southwest Airlines policies are easier to understand if one recognizes the company's most important business strategy. Southwest Airlines since day one has always attempted to maximaize utilization of its expensive assets – its planes. Very rapid turn times enables the airline to keep its planes in the air earning revenue far more hours daily than do its competitors. Southwest's founders adopted two important policies early on to achieve those turn times which are legendary in the industry.
Eliminating assigned seating gives passengers an urgency to board. Passengers voluntarily speed the boarding process as they "compete" for the choicest seats.
Southwest founders also realized that fast turn times could not be achieved without extreme coordination among all its workers – the crew as well as the numerous ground employees. Aircraft just cannot be unloaded, decluttered, and reloaded in 20 minutes unless every employee works together, helping each other by ignoring role assignments. Southwest's founders intentionally instituted its employee friendly environment – the fun atmosphere and the culture of high respect for all employees – exactly to enable the cooperation required to achieve fast turnaround of aircraft. The company has always been highly selective in its hiring process, going to great lengths to keep malcontents from being employed there.
The goal of high utilization of assets drove Southwest to be different from its competitors. It seems to have worked very well.
Something about airline travel just makes my skin crawl – and that Southwest has figured out how to provide the service effectively is an achievement.
To figure out why there is no perfect way to board a plane, I simply think about unboarding a plane. Nothing drives me crazier than when I am sitting in Row 11, and just as the plane reaches the gate, people from rows 20, 30 and higher charge down the aisle … and … just get in the way. So now they are standing in the aisle when people in the earlier rows would be getting up, getting their bags, etc.
I have always wanted to see an experiment where an airline replaced all (or half) of its middle seats and put more room for carry-on baggage. I suspect that in the short run things would speed up and people would find more places for their baggage – but that in the long run, people would simply carry more onto the plane, leaving us with more baggage and fewer passengers in the cabin – worse off than when we started.
Could it simply be that boarding the front rows first leads to faster boarding? The pressure of the people waiting to board would cause people to get their luggage put away quickly and remain in their seats to allow other people to board. The pressure of the crowd behind them would cause them to move more quickly than people who board first in the back.
Also, the activity of passengers continuing to board and pass next to you in the front would make it seem like you are not just idly waiting. If you're in the back with nothing to do, you might get impatient and think the boarding process is taking too long.
It's been a long time since I flew Southwest, I refused to do so because of the A, B, C system. Maybe I don't know much, but I always thought it took longer to board when there was just a mass of people. They would always sit near the front and it would slow boarding down; everytime I had flown on a Southwest flight it always left the gate left because it took so long to board. So I stopped flying Southwest. So maybe now they worked out the kinks, but it never worked when I flew.
What I have noticed though is that now airlines are boarding from the window seat to the isle. So they are getting everyone out of the way the should be in the window first. This is how US Air does it now and it was very quick.
wintercow,
American Airlines didn't reduce the middle seats, but it did reduce the number of seats in its coach cabin. American removed 6 percent of its total seats in order to provide more legroom in the coach class cabins (American Airlines spends $70 million to give you more legroom)
Despite an expensive marketing campaign, More Room Throughout Coach was a financial disaster. American lost $millions of revenue on high demand flights which would have filled even with less legroom. Post-9/11 passengers were more attracted by price discounts than by extra legroom.
I don't think anyone major player in the industry will experiment again with reducing the number of seats in an aircraft.
Matt C,
Southwest Airlines aircraft turnaround times are about half the industry average. Creating a sense of urgency among the boarding passengers is a major reason why.
Sorry to hear about your experiences with late Southwest Airlines flights. Southwest has consistently been at the top of the industry in ontime flight arrivals. In fact, no large airline has beaten Southwest over a full year since at least 2003. JetBlue, when it was much smaller, did edge out Southwest a few years back.
U.S. Airways may win the ontime arrival constest in 2008. They have completely reversed their service problems by offerring significant financial incentives to employees. Southwest will be Number 2 among the large carriers, unless it can wildly outperform U.S. Airways for the rest of 2008.
I'm wondering if this lesson doesn't work as well for what is going on in the government sector.
Economists think they "know" what good things will be produced by this government regulation or that government agency. But "scientists" are inevitably shocked by what actually takes place on the ground — consider what Jeffrey Sachs & other economists anticipated would be the result of reforms in Russia, and what has taken place there in the real world.
People on the ground made use of all sorts of odd contextual knowledge known only to them, and they were involved in any variety of curious learning paths.
All of this was unimaginable to the economists, because it was local knowledge and local learning. The economists thought they new better who things would go, using their bare little formal tools, and they had no idea how the real world of government regulations and government agencies would end up operating.
Well, as someone who flys every week this topic is of much interest to me.
I hate Southwest's boarding procedures. Their service is excellent, but why can't I just have an assinged seat of pretty much my choosing? Before, when they had the cattle call, people were forced to line up an hour early which stinks when you spend as much time in airports as I do. Yes, it made for faster boarding but so what? Take offs and landings are far, far more controlled by flight traffic than boarding procedures.
Now, with the fixed number but no seat policy there is no decrease in boarding time and instead of getting to the airport early, I simply have to wake up or interrupt work 24 hrs in advance. None of this improves my experience at all.
As for short boarding times, most of Southwest's flights are continuations, ie the plane is partially fully at most of the stops. Therefore, less people to board means lower times. Further, they board in groups of 15 which goes a long way. Most zoned boarding done by other airlines have too few zones and a mass of frequent flyers in the first zone. Again, the faster I get on a plane the longer I have to wait on the tarmac. Assinged seat and a single carry-on means I'm getting on dead last.
All that said, they have the best trained staff in the business and priority runway status at Philly Int'l, so as much as I think their boarding is foolish (after all, I get an aisle seat no matter who I fly with) they're still a great airline…except for the 73Gs they fly which I hate.
Stretch,
I know for certain that Southwest has investigated assigned seating. They remain convinced that unassigned seating creates the urgency necessary to get customers to board faster. I agree with them. Every time I fly on a plane with assigned seating, a number of passengers simply wait as long as possible to board, inconveniencing everyone else and delaying departures.
Don't underestimate the value that Southwest provides in fast boarding and fast turn times. The major reason they've been able to survive so well offerring the industry's lowest fares is the high utilization of aircraft and human resources.
I also believe Southwest wastes far less of passengers' time than do the other carriers. They continue to be the number one or number two large carrier in on-time arrivals. With Southwest more than anyone else, what you are promised is what you get.
Southwest's method of assigning groups but leaving the exact seat unassigned results in fewer bottlenecks during the seating process because most people will just grab the first seat toward the front of the plane.
Yes and no. I normally prefer sitting as close to the front of an airplane as possible (always seems to me to be a smoother flight, and you get off the plane quicker at de-board). However, I've noticed that Southwest planes tend to fill up towards the front, so even though I always get checked-in early enough to get an A group, I'll typically walk back to the middle-back of the plane. I prefer window seats, and if you're A45, most of the windows near the front of the plane are taken. So I deliberately get the hell out of the way towards the back of the plane, where I know I'll have room for my carry-on luggage and where I think there's less chance that someone will take the middle seat on a non-full flight.
I am a very frequent Southwest traveler, and admire their operations greatly.
I think it has already been mentioned, but there were two main stated reasons for the new policy.
1) You can buy a number in the top 15. It's actually fairly cheap – $15, I think. More revenue, plus happier regular flyers.
2) You don't have to line up in advance to get your spot.
If there is a number 3, it's that in some airports the lines became a real mess.
Also, it's worth pointing out that most of the additional time required for people to self-sort into the queue is time where the plane is not yet at the gate.
The goal is to minimize the time from pulling into the gate to leaving the gate. Southwest excels at this.
I'm not sure unassigned seating is the biggest factor, but it certainly provides them some benefits. They clear standbys in no time at all, for example. I can't tell you how many hours I've saved by walking up to the gate 10 minutes before a flight leaves and getting on board when my scheduled flight was 2 hours later. (Houston to Dallas every half-hour…)
I think regular Southwest customers are well-trained to the system and swear by it, while regular customers from other airlines are a bit discomforted by it. I remember not liking it at first. But when you see them consistently bring a plane in, unload it, and have it loaded and back up in the air in 20 or so minutes you start to appreciate it the model.
diz: "The goal is to minimize the time from pulling into the gate to leaving the gate. Southwest excels at this.
I'm not sure unassigned seating is the biggest factor, but it certainly provides them some benefits."
You cetainly seem to understand the Southwest business model better than most.
You are correct that other factors may be even more important than unassigned seating in minimizing the turn time of Southwest aircraft.
The incredible attitude of cooperation across workgroups is probably the most important. Southwest has negotiated a relaxation of workrules with its several unions in order to enable flight crews and ground crews to help out wherever needed. All Southwest employees understand well that meeting the turn time goal makes possible their continued employment plus the raises and benefit increases the company can afford in even tough times like these.
Process design and even equipment design are also key factors. One example: Southwest convinced Boeing to relocate service panels for the lavatories. Equipment draining lavs blocks other equipment during turn time.
Minimizing turn times is the critical factor in achieving the industry leading low fares. This is Southwest's critical success factor.
diz: "The goal is to minimize the time from pulling into the gate to leaving the gate. …
I'm not sure unassigned seating is the biggest factor, but it certainly provides them some benefits."
You seem to understand well the Southwest business model.
Cooperation across workgroups is probably the most important factor in minimizing Southwest turn times.. Southwest has negotiated workplace flexibility with its unions. Flight crews and ground crews are free to help out wherever needed. All employees understand that continued employment plus raises and benefit increases are dependent on maintaining turn time efficiency.
Process design and even equipment design are also key factors. One example: Southwest convinced Boeing to relocate service panels for the lavatories. Equipment which drains lavs no longer blocks other equipment during turn time.
Minimizing turn times is Southwest Airlines critical success factor. More than anything else that minimization enables their industry leading low fares.
"This reminds me of my students telling me that it's stupid for Fedex to send all packages to Memphis (or some other hub)."
Most FedEx overnight packages are sorted at its major hubs. But some are retained for more local movements. One example is the intra-Texas shipments between the four large cities. As a FedEx industrial engineer in the late 80’s, I helped design the Texas Bleed Off Network (TBONE). We used small aircraft in simultaneous clockwise and counter-clockwise routings to move thousands of pounds of priority packages between Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas.
Over my 14 years at FedEx, we investigated many options to relieve the time pressures on the Memphis and Indianapolis national hub sorts. But every hub bypass proposal had significant costs. The fully automated sort facilities at the major hubs could not be replicated all over the nation. So a bypass analysis was generally a tradeoff between increased cross country transport costs and increased local sort costs.
I love traveling to distant places, it is just the plane ride that I dislike. To me there is nothing about the process, from buying a ticket to disembarking at my destination, that is enjoyable. I'd drive in a heartbeat if it was feasible. I am not afraid of flying, it is simply not enjoyable.
I susggest that there are more like me than there are that love or enjoy the experience.
Like someone up thread mentioned, rush onto the plane and sit cramped for a long time while everyone else boards; or, lay back and watch until you can walk up and into the plane with no standing in line only to arrive at your seat and have no place to stow your carry-on luggage.
Pick a displeasure.
SW is the least annoying.
I have been a weekly traveler for over 14 years (although a new job has reduced that to two or three times a month). And I will never fly SW again if I can help it. I admire their business and their discipline. But a reserved seat is a very important requirement for me. I can't help but wonder how many lucrative business flyers avoid SW as I do.
Steve
Southwest being one of the most consistently profitable airlines, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they believe the change can increase profits.
I'm sure all the benefits contribute to the bottom line. Price differentiation for Business Select adds revenue, earlier boarding passes may give Southwest better information to manage seat capacity, better customer service = more repeat customers. Plus, the line movement seems to be much quicker. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps the improved organization of the lines prevents some Brownian motion from impeding progress.
In my experience, the change has been a huge improvement in client experience. In fact, I prefer the new method over the reserved seats of other airlines. I find that I can be far back in the boarding line, yet still have more acceptable seat selection than I can find when booking on another airline.
Steve: "I can't help but wonder how many lucrative business flyers avoid SW as I do."
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly reiterated on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning that the airline will continue to focus on price-conscious customers – that Southwest will remain America's low price carrier. As I explained earlier, rapid turn times are the most important factor in driving down costs. Southwest Airlines believes open seating encourages rapid boarding. Together with other processes, rapid boarding enables fast turn times and lower costs.
Southwest experimented with assigned seating in San Diego in 2006. The company quickly determined that open seating was an operational and marketing advantage they would not give up.
If the benefits of having people check in early are two fold:
1. Being that the earlier the customer gets there the better the seat.
2. That the customers early arrival saves the airline money by having the flights leave on a timelier manner.
Then doesn't the ability of being able to print your boarding pass 24 hours before the flight leaves eliminate the second advantage. Since the customer will no longer have to arrive a few hours early at the airport, but will now be able to arrive just a few minutes early. Thus increasing the probability of having to delay a flight in the process of waiting for a customer.
"Thus increasing the probability of having to delay a flight in the process of waiting for a customer. "
Eddie,
Are you referring to Southwest Airlines processes? Southwest provides boarding passes which give a passenger only a place in line. If they arrive after boarding has started, they lose the ability to get a good seat. If they arrive after the flight departure time, they don't fly on that flight. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how there's an increase in probability of flight delay.
Just flew SW for the first time. In addition to the assigned boarding order I noted that the flight attendants take beverage orders for their entire section then serve the beverages from a tray. It seemed faster and avoided the cost and weight of the beverage cart.
My guess is that practically requiring passengers to register for a flight 1 day in advance means that Southwest has much better information about true plane capacity than most other airlines allowing them to overbook their flights more intelligently without getting caught for it more often than their competition.
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