Board games

Could organizing passengers on a mat – yes, an actual physical mat - help speed up aircraft boarding and cut turnaround times?

Late last year, I was approached by Vlad Kolesnik, a researcher from St Petersburg’s State University of Civil Aviation. He told me about a new approach to aircraft boarding called the Flying Carpet. This system, conceived by Australian inventor Rob Wallace, was trialled by Russian low-cost carrier (LCC) S7 Airlines across 62 scheduled flights at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport in April and May 2016. You can watch a video of the first trial here.

It’s a low-tech solution. Basically, groups of passengers board through the gate normally, but once they get through they are held. A staff member then asks the passengers to assemble themselves by seat number on the Flying Carpet (a 8m x 3m mat), which is a 1:5 scaled-down representation of the actual cabin layout. The mat can hold 30-40 passengers and their hand luggage. The passengers, who are by now lined up in row order from the rear to the front of the aircraft, then board with less need to push past one another, or congest the aisle, creating fewer bottlenecks.

In the first trial, the team boarded 171 passengers onto an Airbus A321 in 13 minutes and, in another, 151 passengers were boarded onto an A320 within 10 minutes. The system was new to both S7’s staff members and their passengers, so the Flying Carpet team believes that eight minute-boarding would be achievable. Apparently, passengers were quick to grasp the concept, they found it fair, and both large and small groups were just as easy to manage. Passengers don't need to be called in any particular order, as they will still arrive at the aircraft door in order within their own group.  

“Even though they received only a last-minute explanation, the overwhelming majority [of passengers] readily understood and cooperated enthusiastically - particularly young people and children - taking care to quickly find and step onto their correct numbered places,” Kolesnic said, adding that every minute saved on turnaround means a $40 efficiency gain. Therefore, an airline with 100 aircraft, each making six daily flights, would be in line to save about $36 million per year.

Kolesnik asked for my feedback. I used to work in airline ground handling in the UK and in Belgium, so the project piqued my interest. Let’s face it, aircraft boarding is always a bit of a circus and is pretty accurately summed up by Kolesnik as “the much-hated unregulated cattle-crush.”

So, what do I think? I can see how this could ease boarding flows and I think it is an innovative and elegant solution; often a simple low-tech approach is better than a high-tech complex one.

I have just three immediate reservations. Firstly, manpower. The team said you need a staff member at each end of the mat to open and close the tape barriers. When I worked for a network airline in the late 1990s, we had two members of staff on the gate: one pulling boarding cards and another to man the gate and log the passengers that had boarded. If this system requires two more staff members on the gate, it could offset a large chunk of the $36 million in savings.

I stress the ‘if’ in that last sentence. Gates are becoming increasingly more automated, so perhaps two staff members could be enough, with one on the gate itself (you need a person there for passenger queries anyhow) and one manning the Flying Carpet. However, there is an industry push towards reducing staff numbers (and costs), rather than maintaining the status quo of the late 1990s. Perhaps there is potential to develop this idea further, or combine it with other technologies?

Secondly, timing. The team said the current average boarding time is 22 to 25 minutes. This doesn’t sound dissimilar to the TOTAL turnaround time – rather than just boarding time - that UK LCC easyJet was achieving in the late 1990s. Remember, you have to get the passengers off, the aircraft serviced and the passengers back on again within the turnaround time.

Admittedly, this is given as an average and not all airlines can achieve a performance like easyJet. Since then, even budget airlines have increased their complexity – for example by flying into primary airports - and today’s high load factors put a further strain on timings. Also, the days of budget airlines boarding by both the front and rear doors seem to be fading, because more flights are operating into gates with airbridges. But 10 minutes is a pretty impressive boarding performance regardless.

Thirdly, business passengers. In my experience, business travelers do not share the enthusiasm of young people and children. They don’t want any more processes - they just want to get on the aircraft - and I can easily imagine high-tier frequent fliers getting very frustrated at having to stand in a box on a mat.

Overall, I credit the team on a novel approach to an age-old problem. Anything that kills the monotony of boarding and speeds up the process is fine by me.

What do you think of this idea? Please drop me a line with your thoughts on the e-mail address below.

Victoria Moores [email protected]