Undelayed Flights

Dear Congressman,

Since the beginning of 2009, I have personally boarded eleven different flights for various destinations, both work related and personal. As a frequent flier yourself, you are probably aware that most flights appear to be departing at full capacity, with only two of my trips having any open seats available.

But with this many people crowding onto airplanes comes the problem of on-time departures, with delays mainly being caused by weather at main hub airports (New York, Chicago, etc). Another source of delays in departure are the actual passengers themselves, as they take forever and a day to get onto the plane and plant their butts in their seats.

We have all met the person in line in front of us who arrives at their seat, looks at their ticket, looks at the seat number on the console above them, looks at the ticket again, thinks for a minute, then proceeds to scan around for an overhead slot to put the over-sized bag that they brought on the plane because they did not want to pay the bag fee. After several minutes of concentrated searching, this person finally finds the spot to put their bag, usually the last place they thought to look, which is directly over their seat, and then proceed to take another minute of bag wrestling to get it perfectly placed to their own particular demands. At this point, the person will fake a movement to their seat, turn and give you a half smile, and then proceed to spend another several minutes in the aisle while they take off their coat, fold it in a maticulous fashion, and then stow it in the overhead area as well. Finally, as if conceding to the inevitable tide of angry people winding from the row in front of them all the way up to the gate, the person finally sits down in his/her seat so everyone else can now get to their assigned area.

Normally there are only four or five of these people, but they tend to be the first people on the plane, thus backing up the rest of us like a latrine at a cheese festival. So now the plane is delayed and the majority of the passengers are pissed off, knowing that some will miss their connecting flights due to Mr/Mrs Slow Boarder Extraordinaire.Â

How do we fix it... simple... we make these people get on last, in seat number order so they do not block each other as they take their time stowing their bags and getting into their seats.

Now you ask... how do you figure to get them on the plane last?

Again, a simple solution. Most major airlines board by zone number, which allows them to spread people through the plane and get to their seats more easily. This only works well if you can eliminate the Slow Boarder Extraordinaires from the equation.

Nowadays, when boarding a plane, the gate agent will scan your ticket. I propose that the scanning of a ticket starts a timer on the seat location on the ticket. The timer is only turned off when 50lbs of pressure or more is applied to the seat listed on the ticket. The program will need logic to deduct time from people who are stuck behind the Slow Boarder, but after a few flights the airlines will be able to identify who these wasteful slugs are on a regular basis. Once they have been tagged as a habitual human flight delay machine, then they are given a "Zone 25 status"

Thus, when they get their next airplane ticket, they will be assigned boarding Zone 25.

So it would go something like this:

"I would like to announce the boarding of flight 178 to Spokane, now boarding Zone 1 only."

Five minutes later

"Now boarding Zones 1 - 4. Zones 1 - 4 only."

Ten minutes later...

"Now boarding Zones 1- 5. Boarding Zones 1 -5 at this time."

Ten minutes later...

"Final boarding call for flight 178. All Zone 25 passengers are free to board at this time....."