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Southwest has the opposite thesis: it believes that baggage handlers are faster at loading bags under the plane than passengers would be trying to stuff those b
by slapshot 11y ago
Southwest has the opposite thesis: it believes that baggage handlers are faster at loading bags under the plane than passengers would be trying to stuff those bags overhead.
At least in the US, Southwest is known (notorious) for the having the fastest ground turns of 737s. They started at 10 minutes [1] and have moved to a leisurely 25 minutes, against a US average of 90 minutes.
This seems to make a lot of sense to me -- baggage handlers are pretty fast and can move bags much faster than passengers can board a plane. Moving luggage handling below the plane allows two parallel tasks to execute: one stream is focused on passengers finding seats and the other is focused on bags being loaded. Otherwise you have serial execution of passengers trying to upload bags to the bins before the next passenger can do anything.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/43768488 http://www.cnbc.com/id/43768488
- pavel_lishin 11y agoBut don't most people bring a carry on on board anyway?
- cozzyd 11y agoThe issue is that on other airlines that charge baggage fees, everyone brings a big roller bag on board. There isn't enough room for everyone's bag, so this leads to a massive slowdown as people try to find a spot, flight attendant's trying to convince people to put stuff that fits under seats under the seat, etc.
- martinald 11y agoBut you've got 100+ people trying putting their bag overhead and usually only 1 or 2 people physically in a 737 loading baggage (because it's so small). Plus surely the airport is going to charge more to handle 100+ checked bags vs 5? And if there is a big problem with the baggage system and none of the baggage arrives, you've got a much bigger problem if everyone's baggage is checked vs only a handful of items... Interesting.