While many travelers know to only make their travel plansafter a thorough review of cheaptravel options such as cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, discounttravel deals, and cheap vacation packages, fliers frequentlyexperience frustration when trying to find space for carry-ons when boarding aplane.
Airlines are continuing to look for ways to save time byspeeding up the boarding process that historically has created delays evenbefore a plane leaves the gate.
Delta is trying a new approach in an effort to helppassengers onto planes more quickly. Delta is offering a complementary program being called Early Valetwhich will pre-load carry-on bags before customers enter planes. Agents are approaching customers seated inthe gate area to see if they would like to participate.
Bags are specially tagged and then taken onto the plane priorto boarding and placed above a customers seat based on his or her seatassignment. The airline wants to see ifits own workers can load the bins faster than passengers.
The program commenced on June 1st and is beingoffered on select departures at airports in Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis-St.Paul, New York (JFY and LaGuardia), Salt Lake City, and Seattle. The tentative end date of this test is August31st.
It will only be available on flights that usually have a highnumber of vacationers. The assumption isthat business travelers already know how to board a plane efficiently.
This program was initially tested last summer at theHartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and at the Los AngelesInternational Airport. Enough timesavings in the boarding process were observed to warrant expanding this test.
Some experts question whether Deltas carry-ons-first testwill make a complex boarding process even more complex, especially fornon-frequent fliers. Select passengersmay be hesitant to hand over their carry-on luggage because it containsvaluables which they may not want to leave unattended.
Given the fact that airlines are cramming more seats ontoplanes and charging for checked baggage has resulted in less room toaccommodate everyones carry-ons, some people believe that Delta might bebetter off focusing its efforts instead on ensuring that passengers are notviolating its carry-on restrictions.
Most airlines allow their first class and other elitepassengers board first. There is nouniversal agreement on how to most efficiently fill a plane after this firststep. Some airlines fill the rear rowsfirst and then work toward the front. Others fill window seats and work toward the aisle. Still other airlines use a combination of thetwo.
Airlines have also tried other approaches such as lettingpassengers board early if they do not have aisle clogging carry-on bags.
Given that many flights are full, experienced fliers areoften anxious knowing that boarding late means that there might not be any roomleft in overhead bins.
Slow boarding is a major concern of airlines since it createsdelays which can result in missed connections, unhappy customers, and extracosts. Every extra minute a plane standsidle at a gate adds $30 in costs. Anaverage of one in four US flights are at least 15 minutes late. Multiply this by thousands of flights eachday, and the cost adds up quickly.
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