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I've always found the behavior of leaving planes (and just crowd control in general) to be fascinating. The normal way people leave planes seems to be from fro

by cbanek 8y ago

I've always found the behavior of leaving planes (and just crowd control in general) to be fascinating. The normal way people leave planes seems to be from front to back, and each one wants to go and get their stuff out of the overhead bin, basically blocking everyone behind them. What would be more efficient is if we went from aisle to window (in columns, rather than rows), so that each aisle person could get out (the entirety from front to back of the plane), get their luggage, then all walk off the plane. Then you do the next column of people, closer to the window, and do the same. In doing this, at least everyone would be grabbing their bags at the same time, effectively pipelining the operation. The only thing that doesn't surprise me is that people don't do the most efficient thing. I also think it's hilarious how people tend to congregate at junctions of hallways, and block them, which are where most of the traffic has to go through, rather than getting out of the way (not even that much) to let people get through. By being in the intersection of two hallways, you can block more than one at once. Maybe I should have gone into traffic flow engineering instead of CS...

wuunderbar 8y ago
> What would be more efficient is if we went from aisle to window (in columns, rather than rows), so that each aisle person could get out (the entirety from front to back of the plane), get their luggage, then all walk off the plane. Then you do the next column of people, closer to the window, and do the same. In doing this, at least everyone would be grabbing their bags at the same time, effectively pipelining the operation. The only thing that doesn't surprise me is that people don't do the most efficient thing. Yes this is fairly efficient (and the reverse is true of boarding airplanes), however it's wholly unrealistic to expect or require people to do this as there are a significant portion of travelers who sit in groups. You're not going to convince a parent to deplane before their children simply because they sat in the aisle seat.
eridius 8y ago
Aisle-to-window wouldn't work because you'd get lots of the aisle people now clogging the airplane exit passage as they wait for their friends and family to come out. People traveling as a group sit next to each other. Exiting by column absolutely guarantees that people in the same group will exit at different times, which means they have to wait for the entire airplane to deplane anyway in order to put their group back together. Exiting by column really only helps solo travelers.

by cbanek 8y ago

wuunderbar 8y ago

> What would be more efficient is if we went from aisle to window (in columns, rather than rows), so that each aisle person could get out (the entirety from front to back of the plane), get their luggage, then all walk off the plane. Then you do the next column of people, closer to the window, and do the same. In doing this, at least everyone would be grabbing their bags at the same time, effectively pipelining the operation. The only thing that doesn't surprise me is that people don't do the most efficient thing. Yes this is fairly efficient (and the reverse is true of boarding airplanes), however it's wholly unrealistic to expect or require people to do this as there are a significant portion of travelers who sit in groups. You're not going to convince a parent to deplane before their children simply because they sat in the aisle seat.

eridius 8y ago

Aisle-to-window wouldn't work because you'd get lots of the aisle people now clogging the airplane exit passage as they wait for their friends and family to come out. People traveling as a group sit next to each other. Exiting by column absolutely guarantees that people in the same group will exit at different times, which means they have to wait for the entire airplane to deplane anyway in order to put their group back together. Exiting by column really only helps solo travelers.