10 Ways to Fix Air Travel

• air travel
• aircraft
• Airbus
• Boeing
• FAA
• technology
• aviation

Faster Boarding

After battling to get to the airport, struggling through check-in and plodding through security, you’re at the gate—but there’s one more bottleneck: boarding. You elbow for position at the ticket scanner, trudge down the Jetway, contort to slide past passengers blocking the aisle and finally slump into your seat. In addition to amping up aggravation, inefficient boarding increases turnaround time, which costs airlines—and, inevitably, consumers—money.

In 2002 an operations research team at Arizona State University conducted extensive modeling of “seat and aisle interferences”—passengers getting in each other’s way—and concluded that the fastest boarding strategy is a staggered “reverse pyramid.” Fill rear window seats first, then rear middle seats and midplane windows, then mid-plane middle seats and front windows, and so on. Most airlines, however, board passengers in blocks, starting at the rear and working forward. The study’s most surprising finding: With typical boarding, line-jumping is beneficial. “It actually speeds the process for everyone if you board before your turn,” says ASU’s Menkes van den Briel.

Integrate Cities and Airports

John Kasarda, a business professor at the University of North Carolina, calls it the Aerotropolis—the airport city—and sees it as a crucial node in global business. “Airports are much more than just transportation infrastructure,” Kasarda says. “High-tech firms are clustering around airports, and high-tech workers travel 40 percent more frequently than other professionals.” Kasarda would place business-focused airports at the center of their own commercial hubs—associated with the nearest traditional city, but in their own urban zones. Dedicated expressway lanes for cargo would pull trucks out of the local transportation congestion mix, while high-speed trains would take workers and frequent business fliers to nearby clusters of residences and hotels. Nonbusiness flights would continue from traditional airports, while most commercial air travel would be routed from the Aerotropolises, speeding both business and leisure travelers on their way. Both Aero-tropolis and the traditional downtown, now separated from each other, would benefit from faster commerce and lowered ground-traffic congestion, which is one of the major sources of airport CO2 emissions and other pollution. Kasarda notes that even aesthetics count: “The airport is your front door,” he says. “It’s the first thing travelers see when they arrive, and it’s the last thing they see when they leave.”

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