Boarding an airplane isn't efficient. Airlines like it that way
Airlines use slower boarding methods because they help sell perks like priority boarding and seat upgrades.
Saving time or making a few extra bucks? Southwest Airlines wasn't the first to do assigned seating, but it’s certainly the latest to remind passengers that the aviation industry prioritizes money over efficiency.
“It’s an extremely significant change for Southwest. It’s one of the most monumental changes that Southwest has made as an airline because it changes a business process that the airline has used for 54 years,” Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research, a travel industry analytics firm, told me. “Southwest recognized it could be much more competitive and much more profitable by embracing assigned seating and adding extra legroom seats. ... File this under, if you can’t beat them, join them.”
The move by Southwest, which was long known as a customer-friendly, quirky airline that went its own way on many policies, shows how the aviation industry has homogenized over the years, and coalesced around the importance of Wall Street performance. Though Southwest did recently announce some tweaks after customers said the new process wasn’t going so smoothly.
Delta Air Lines similarly updated its boarding process in 2024, streamlining the way it classifies its boarding groups and assigning all passengers a group number, rather than just those in the Main Cabin. American Airlines changed the boarding process to start five minutes earlier.
Even though boarding by group is not the most efficient way to load an airplane from a time perspective, Harteveldt said, it allows airlines to monetize the boarding process in a way that Southwest couldn’t do as effectively when it had open seating.
The most efficient boarding method
Researchers have shown time and again that boarding by group is not the most efficient way to load an airplane from a time perspective. Same goes for boarding back-to-front. Even a random free-for-all would likely take less time than the way airlines organize their boarding now, but the actual most efficient method, the Steffen Method, is highly choreographed and would take full cooperation from everyone on each flight.
The most efficient way to load a plane progresses as follows: everyone sitting in odd-numbered row window seats boards first, then even-numbered row window seats, then odd-numbered row middle seats and so on. “It’s not necessarily an easy thing to implement. I wasn’t going for whether it was easy or not, the question I was going for was: What’s the fastest,” Jason Steffen, the researcher who first modeled the method in 2008, previously told me. “There are some challenges to implementing my method. Everyone has to line up in a specific order. That’s a solvable problem, but it’s a solvable problem that has a cost.”
Why airlines board by group
It’s the cost that Steffen mentioned that’s behind why airlines don’t use his efficient boarding process. Airlines prioritize money, which they can extract from customers more easily with a less efficient boarding process. IdeaWorksCompany, an aviation data analytics firm, projected in November that airlines globally would make $157 billion in ancillary revenue in 2025 from extra fees like those for priority boarding, seat selection and checked bags.
“You can sense the fear and anxiety among the travelers at the gate wondering if they will get their carry-on bags in the overhead bins,” Harteveldt said. “The reason that people value priority boarding isn’t because they want to be squeezed into an airline seat for an extra 10-20 minutes, it’s because they want more certainty that they’ll be able to get their carry-on into overhead bins.
Because of that fear, and the desire not to have to gate check their bags, airlines are able to sell tickets with priority boarding at a premium, or even sell boarding priority separately for its own fee. “Airline finance teams are happy about the fact that people are anxious about boarding,” Harteveldt said.
Not all airlines structure their groups exactly the same, however. United Airlines, for example, uses so-called WILMA boarding for its economy passengers, organizing groups so those sitting in window seats board first, then middle seat passengers, then those with aisle seats.
When I flew on Southwest Airlines on its first day of assigned seating in January, I also found that people have truly come to expect boarding by group. I thought I might see some confusion or frustration, but the process has become so standardized across airlines that no one seemed caught off-guard by the change.
“Southwest tried to be different, they had open seating for more than half a century,” Harteveldt said, adding that those days are now permanently behind us. “The only thing that differs between airlines is the color of the paint on the outside and which cities an airline uses as its hubs.”
Bag fees also play a role. When Southwest Airlines started charging for checked bags in conjunction with its new boarding process, many passengers mentioned that overhead bin space was harder to come by. IdeaWorksCompany has advocated for airlines to start charging fees for carry-on bags as a way to help preserve overhead bin space.
Will airline boarding ever change?
It’s not likely, or at least – there's probably no going back to the way it was, either at Southwest with open seating or other airlines boarding back to front. “There’s a risk this could become even more granular,” Harteveldt said. “As airlines are exploring ways to monetize the journey, are they going to go from six groups to nine or nine groups to 12 because they’re going to say that people who paid this fare and have this status deserve to be further up the pecking order.”
Aside from some small difference though, such as when families with strollers get to board or the exact order of elite frequent flyer priority, basically all airlines load their planes the same way these days.
Source: External
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