The Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use 

I feel like he wrote this script while waiting to board a plane.

"The human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking". That aged well.

Having worked in aviation for years (cabin crew for many) I can’t even begin to explain how badly normal people who ordinarily excel in everyday life seem to completely loose all sense of intelligence the moment the enter an airport.

If you wanted the slowest possible method of boarding, front to back seems decent enough, but doing the Steffen method in reverse seems ideal. Front to back, don't alternate, seated from the aisles out to the window. Maximises seat shuffling, minimises pullaways and parallels. Call it the Steffen Corrupted.

“to achieve this ballet, there are no boarding groups…” magnificent

*"The human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking."*

As an airline pilot let me give you my 2 cents. Passengers don't slow down loading, cargo baggage does. The time it takes to get people's bags under the aircraft takes forever. The passenger will actually board before their bag goes through all the extra security on it's way to the plane.

Shout out to the guys who only bring 1 bag and literally sit in their seat and then slide the backpack under their seat. You are Steffen Perfect

Actually, the first encounter I ever had with boarding groups was on a flight to the US. All flights I have had before, mainly in Europe, were what you describe as: "Hey guys, plane's ready."

Have the flight attendant crack a whip every time someone takes more than 5 seconds putting in their luggage

As an airline pilot, I can say that the turnaround time is not normally limited by passenger boarding or deplaning. The refueling and cargo/bag loading take longer and limit the time. My opinion is that fewer rules to follow will give customers less to worry about.

You forgot to factor in the limited overhead storage that the rear passengers use in the front as they pass by. Thereby making front passengers look for space further in and then have to swim back upstream against the traffic flow to get to their seat.

“You cant just open the boarding gate and let everyone flock in like cattle” UK: watch

I love how everyone is smiling happily in his dream outcome, and everyone is sad normally

i just went on a flight recently and they said: “boarding groups 1-4, 5, 6, everyone get on” and it was the fastest i’ve ever gotten on a plane and it made me think of this haha

When boarding a domestic flight in Australia, as you enter the aerobridge, there is a sign which directs rows 1-15 to continue along the aerobridge and board the aircraft through the front door, and rows 15+ to walk down the stairs out onto the apron and board using the rear stairs, filling the plane from both ends.

Passengers: "BUT I WANNA GET ON THE PLANE NOW!" Crew: "the only difference is you're gonna sit in a plane instead of sitting in an airport. The plane leaves when it's ready, not when you are."

I have flown a lot in my 58 years and I will say the real problem began when airlines started charging extra for luggage. Suddenly everyone had carry-ons and this slowed boarding down dramatically. I remember the day when the only thing I took on the plane was my handbag, which I stowed under the seat in front of me after I was seated.

It is funny to think that no boarding system at all is superior to every boarding system used by airlines today.

Can I volunteer an idea to help with human’s inability to follow instructions ? It’s the fact that when people don’t know you’re breaking a rule, it’s much easier to break it. An example is people boarding the plane although it’s not their group’s turn. In comparison, when plane staff calls people group by group to UNBOARD the plane (row 1 to 15, 15 to 30 and so on), people tend to follow that rule much more, otherwise it’s OBVIOUS they’re braking it and are trying to take advantage of the system and go past people they were not meant to. SO an idea would be to make rule breaking obvious from the start, for example by printing boarding passes of different colors, and calling them out by colors (« we now invite passengers with a RED ticket to board the plane »). This would draw attention to the ticket’s color which is obvious to everyone, and people couldn’t hope that the front desk staff will « not notice » that they’re from another group. In my mind, it works !

I’ve been flying for 20 years and not once have I boarded with “window, middle aisle.”

ill admit, when i clicked on this vid i did not expect such poetic interjections

The ending is the most tragic part by far. Not only is leaving the plane incredibly slow, but optimising that process would be so simple, it's easy and intuitive to explain to people. You'd just have to get one side of the aisle row to stand up and leave, then the other side aisle, then middle etc.

I was on a flight a few months ago and they had a different method where the plane had a door at the front and one at the rear. So it went front to middle and back to middle simultaneously. Seemed like a smart idea, except for the fact that you inevitably got people near the back who entered from the front, or vice versa, and all of a sudden you had an even larger traffic jam than before, since now both lines were getting stopped by whatever random person didn't enter from the correct door and was trying to move against the flow...

This video is definitely a curse, every single time I am waiting to leave a plane It will pop into my mind as I wait far too long for people in front of me to leave

"For every complex problem there is a solution that is both simple, obvious and wrong."

I just love coming back to this video whenever I board a Plane. I have "Boarding Group 51" right now. I'll get up from my waiting seat towards the end of it, since i have an aisle seat.

The fastest way, and applicable in low cost airlines, would be to not assign seats in advance, but print the seat allocation at the gate. This way, we can fill out the plane back to front and window to aisle simultaneously, and maintain groups sitting together.

The second sentence of this video: “You can’t just throw open the gates.” *proceeds to explain that it’s more efficient to throw open the gates*

How bad was ur flight man

4:30 The seat shuffle is a HUGE DEAL. You’re just looking at the aggregate but if you look at individual frustration, a lot of Bonobo bickering would be solved and less people would flip out and delay the entire flight so they can de board the person suffering at the hands of Parkinson’s Law.

I have almost always flown with Delta and they load front to back. I had always heard about how they were evil, but I didn't realize they were actually the reaper.

I feel like CGP Grey made this video while having a 12 hour layover for his flight

I'm sticking with my theory of having the seats on the outside of the plane.

Why are CGP Grey's wording rhymes so nicing but yet not so noticeable? Love it

This is why when I am on a plane I pick the very last row and I blissfully wait my turn both boarding and exiting, because the real bliss is to not let the time it takes get you in a bad mood. If you approach life in this way, everyday is a vacation because you’re just happy to be on a plane at all, remembering all the souls who never have or never will have that privilege. It’s all about perspective.

As a European, I genuinely thought that everyone just did the “planes here” method

5:35 probably one of the best usages of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers

Never seen window-to-aisle in reality, but I would love to observe how families with kids or groups in general react to this 😄

According to this video, the fastest boarding time is to have the people sit in their seats before they board the plane and teleport them inside the fuselage.

That's weird. Here in Europe everytime I have flown somewhere, they just announced: "The plane is here, you can start boarding". And everyone just starts boarding. Without any groups or anything.

I like that the guy in 1D had his martini the whole time

This could easily be solved by having assigned seating in the waiting area. Each seat would have various numbers or labels that would correspond with the waiting area. People would come in and sit in their seat in the order they will be on the airplane. Then one entire row all window A seats could get up at the same time and single file go onto the plane back to front. Now airports have a variety of airplanes, and so it would not be needed to shuffle chairs, one could have different labels (green, blue, red,) and if using airplane A everyone sits in seats according to that color label. A flight attendent could walk around and help people as needed ahead of time, if there were difficulties in getting ready. It might also be easier to do every other row. (We are now boarding A seats even numbers, we are boarding A seats odd numbers.) If the seats were laid out carpet colors or tape on the carpet could make it easier for everyone to "know" where they are on the airplane. This could even include indications for bathrooms and or emergency exits. As parties want to board together, they wait till the last person in the party boards.

Flew with JAL, and they used the window-aisle method. Worked very well and it was a quick pushback

And I’m the jerk who just waits in the terminal until y’all get your seating figured out and stroll in and sit down at the last minute... I don’t have patience for the line 😂

There is actually an interesting boarding method that the military uses when they do mass transportation of soldiers that is potentially more efficent then Steffan Perfect. When the US Military deploys entire batallions or brigades of troops from one continent to another, they do so by chartering entire 777 or other dreamliner class trans-oceanic flights. The method is back to front, every second isle, but with a twist. You load back to front, no choice of which seat, and you do not stowe your bag immediatly. You sit down in the seat with your bag in your lap and wait. Once the row has filled and the row in front has filled, all bags are passed to the isle seat, who shoves them all into the overhead bins one by one for the entire row. While you are sitting down with your bag in your lap, you have a couple moments to pull out whatever items you will immediatly need and prep your bag to be stowed. I do not know if the method has a specific name, but I experienced it on three separate occations going to or from deployments. This seating method basicly reduces all stopages from stowing bags and from seat shuffling to nearly zero. This however would basicaly never work for a civillian flight for many reasons. People traveling together and trust being the major issues. General travelers will likely not trust in handing their bag of personal belongings to a random stranger to have them stuff it into the overhead, and the random isle-seat passenger will probably not be willing to do the extra work of putting 5-7 bags into he overhead one after another. (As I said, trans-pacific flights, where it's two isles and 7-8 seats in the middle row and 4-5 in each side row, and sometimes even an upstairs and downstairs.) People traveling in groups would want to all sit together, and this seating method has basicly zero promise that they will even be in the same row, as by the time they get to their seats, the group might be split between two entirly different sections. So while this seating method is highly efficent, it can basicly only occur when every single person involved is on the same page, knows the plan, and is basicly ordered 'this is how this is going to happen so just shut up and do it because it's not up for debate' Edit : It's also one of the only times when every single person on the plane has at least one firearm, but they have all taken the bolt out and put it in their pocket, and nobody has any ammo.

The use of sanitizer following the triple high five is GOLD

One time I flew to Ireland from Italy, but one flight with like 300 people had landed JUST before mine. To make it better, I was at the back of the plane. And I had another flight in 1 hour that I needed to get on to go back home. Needless to say, I have never ran as fast as I did that day.

Fastest way: Get 2 aircraft cabins. Get people in the seats before the aircraft arrives. Take out the other cabin, put the new one in and go :D

"The plane is here, go ahead everyone" is what we do in Asia tho. (first-class still goes first ofc)

I love how the expression of boarding people changes when they board at theoretically fastest boarding method.

5:13 Can we appreciate seeing a 2 dimensional figure transcend to a 3rd dimension while still being 2 dimensional between 3 planes

The plane I use is always random boarding. I thought that that was annoying until I saw this video.

The easiest method is to be in a pandemic, there’s like 10 people per flight.

A similar video for passenger-side in airports in general would be great, it feels like there would be a much better way to get every passenger arriving to an airport bag-dropped and through security more seamlessly and in less time

People are always late, running out of cargo space, and rearranging seats to sit with each other and at the window.

1:06 Top ten rappers Eminem was too afraid to diss

Other airlines: Boarding groups. Turkish Airlines (and maybe some others): Plane here, go on, we have doors both front and back so we use both.

I love how informative yet entertaining this is, especially with the casual poems and fancy sounding quotes dropped in.

Absolutely love the animation. Honestly could watch all of RU-vid like this.

Life pro tip if/when assigned a seat & packed light: don’t get into the line at all. Wait until everyone else has boarded. Sit leisurely in the waiting area. As they announce final boarding, walk on and sit down - line free.

There is one Brazilian Airline (Azul Airlines) that uses the Steffen Perfect. They have projectors in the ceiling of boarding gates that projects on the ground the sets that should be entering in the correct order, meanwhile the other passengers can wait seated. It's very effective and super fun way to board! hahaha

At 3:05, is that supposed to be a generic RU-vidr, or at the very least, Casey Neistat with his signature shades? 🤣

I’m surprised you didn’t mention it but what airlines should do is board from the BACK and board front to back. That keeps the profit incentive but minimizes the bottlenecks.

The fact that animated CGP Grey sanitized his hands after the triple partner parallel is just hurting my brain because this was in 2019

* shows up late and disrupts perfectly logical and time-efficient boarding process *

I love the subtle, prescient hand sanitiser use at 2:03.

The Reaper method maximizes time for cheaper seats at the back and minimizes time for more expensive seats at the front. This increases the time difference and incentive to pay more money to get the seats at the front.

I liked the hand sanitizer after the high fives at 2:00.

Wait... there are flights that DON'T board randomly???!

The other problem with efficient boarding is that the airline cannot blame delays on slow boarding. How many times have you heard this: "We will leave as soon as everyone is seated." followed by, "Well we lost our take-off window and now we have to sit at the gate for a while or taxi around slowly." Because it's impossible to take into account how long it takes to board. Yeah, no-one should believe that. It would be great one day if the passengers could call the flight crew's bluff and everyone immediately sits down unexpectedly quick, so that they have to find a new excuse.

in australia we don’t have these weird “boarding groups” we just have priority/people who need assistance, and then everyone else boards from the front or the back depending on where you sit. (ie: rows 1-15 board from the front bridge, and 16-30 from the back stairs)

I feel like the "ideal world" method might actually work in a place like Japan.

"the human inability to follow instructions is breathtaking" as a former MMORPG raider, I verify this with my enraged tears.

I have a tons of ideas to improve boarding : - have more doors - have less seats per row - have more stops so not everyone boards and leaves at the same time - have longer vehicles - have more flexible bag storing, with overhead storing that can be smaller, as well as large accessible bag storing shelves periodically (next to doors and in the middle) Oh, that sounds a lot like a train...

You did mention the flaw that would defeat any improvement in boarding methods, the human inability or just plain unwillingness to follow directions. When I went to basic training in the military some decades ago, we were 80 guys in one unit for many long weeks. To go from one place to another, we marched. To get into marching formation we formed a height line, tallest in the front to shortest in the back, then filed into marching formation. I can't remember standing behind the same guy twice in a row, ever. Did our relative heights change from one hour to another? I doubt it. We just failed at even the most simple of cooperative tasks.

This is why I dont give a dam who they're calling, I just sit there till I'm the last person, walk on and just find a seat

The problem with the window-middle-aisle thing is that families often sit together, and I don’t think a baby would be able to go on its own

Air New Zealand board forward half on the front gate, back half through the tarmac to the back door. It works really well.

Last weekend I flew American and noticed that we boarded very quickly and in a "strange order." I noticed the boarding groups were scattered across the plane on all 4 flights and wondered what was happening. Wonder if someone saw your video and made some changes.

1:02 Finally, the CGP Grey rap we've been waiting for

My secret fastest boarding method is waiting for everyone else to get on the plane then sauntering on last

Excellent alliteration, as usual.... and those last 15 seconds were just the cherry on top, as mean-spirited as pionent!

Never seen one of your videos before. This was awesome. Glad to be a new subscriber. GREAT STUFF!

2:02 cgp was sanitising his hands before it was cool

Got 2 notifications about airlines and assumed it was from Wendover Productions.

The window - middle - aisle doesn’t take into account that aisle passengers likely don’t have overhead space and have to go up and down the aisles to put their overhead luggage, which slows down the boarding considerably. This also slow down the disembarking as people in the front have to trek back to get their luggage from overhead bins because they are no longer directly above them. Back to front does not have this same issue, and thus I believe your theory here is flawed from a practical standpoint.

What about using the front AND back doors of the plane?

Just do the Southwest... "Sit where you want i don't care"

"hey everyone... plane's here... go ahead" is the funniest thing you've ever said

I always laugh when we land and ppl are just standing waiting to get out as it takes 20 minutes for the bridge to get in place and they have to wait for everyone to get out before they can even move 😂😂😂

I was leaving back home from London, they were queuing to queue.

It’s weird because here in Europe, I have never experienced boarding groups-It’s always been the ‘planes here’ method. In fact, up until a few years ago, EasyJet didn’t even use allocated seats so you could sit wherever you want. The closest thing to boarding groups I have experienced here is when they open the front and back doors of the planes so you are told if you sit in the rear of the plane to use the back door. They don’t force you or organise you but most people do it on their own as it is legitimately more convenient.

As a teen I was returning from visiting family in Palm Springs Ca and there was a load of Marines on leave from 29 Palms also departing. Not sure if they were ordered to do so of if it arose organically in their Marine minds but they organized window, middle, isle from back to front with bags they knew where they would fit and the other 8 or 10 of us mere mortals managed to fit in well enough not to much things up and I swear we loaded the plane in about 90 seconds. Well, I'm not sure exactly how fast but it was fast enough that the captain gave the announcement we were leaving early. "You all did such a great job boarding we were able to bump up our departure time by 10 minutes, so we'll um, be underway I guess... " You could hear the pleasurable bewilderment in his voice... Departing the plane was just as orderly and with that single flight I experienced nirvana. Never before, never again...

This explains perfectly what I have spent countless hours in line pondering! That ending will haunt every flight I take from now on! 😅

the only problem with cgp greys solution is that if there is a family, im fairly sure a five year old wants to board with their family.

That’s why when I land in a plane, I just sit there for like 7 minutes so that it’s not too stressful waiting for everyone else in front of my to get off the plane

The problem with steffen “perfect” is that the time you save with the actual boarding you lose trying to get everyone in line

I haven't flown in more than 10 years so this video was really helpful and inspiring.

In Australia most airlines board from the front and back at the same time. So if your in rows 15 - 25 you will go to the back of the plane and board via some stairs. Means you don't have a situation where someone in seat 19 is waiting for people at the front to put their bags away. Doesn't completely remove the bag issue but it reduces it somewhat.