With its newly revealed plan to change its airplane-boarding process, United Airlines UAL, -2.61% is clearly hoping to speed things up and relieve the bottlenecks that have long vexed passengers.United’s plan, which the airline says it has tested, is known in the industry as “Wilma” — which stands for first boarding passengers seated by a window , followed by those seated in the middle and finally those seated on the aisle .
Steffen’s own preferred method — in the airline world it’s actually known as the Steffen Method — is to board passengers in the same window, middle, aisle order. But within each group, he limits how many passengers can board at one time — passengers with window seats in odd-numbered rows might go ahead of passengers with window seats in even-numbered rows, for instance.
The random approach is faster, experts note, because passengers opt to spread out. Again, it’s all about avoiding those bottlenecks, especially with the bin stuffing. In fact, the “MythBusters” team proclaimed the random method, with no assigned seats, the fastest, with a boarding time of 14 minutes and 7 seconds.For starters, the Steffen Method can create its own confusion by increasing the number of boarding groups.
— Airline-industry consultant Robert Mann That’s especially true because the early boarders now include plenty of passengers in economy seats spread throughout the plane, Hareveldt said, where in the past they tended to be mainly passengers seated in first or business class. That’s because the airlines make money from selling preferred access or win customer loyalty by granting certain flyers such access. In other words, there may be a need for speed in boarding, but that can lose out to the almighty dollar.
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