What is a more efficient boarding method than back-to-front? 16

If you wanted the slowest possible method of boarding, front to back seems decent enough, but doing the Steffen method in reverse seems ideal. Front to back, don't alternate, seated from the aisles out to the window. Maximises seat shuffling, minimises pullaways and parallels. Call it the Steffen Corrupted.

There is one Brazilian Airline (Azul Airlines) that uses the Steffen Perfect. They have projectors in the ceiling of boarding gates that projects on the ground the sets that should be entering in the correct order, meanwhile the other passengers can wait seated. It's very effective and super fun way to board! hahaha

“to achieve this ballet, there are no boarding groups…” magnificent

There is actually an interesting boarding method that the military uses when they do mass transportation of soldiers that is potentially more efficent then Steffan Perfect. When the US Military deploys entire batallions or brigades of troops from one continent to another, they do so by chartering entire 777 or other dreamliner class trans-oceanic flights. The method is back to front, every second isle, but with a twist. You load back to front, no choice of which seat, and you do not stowe your bag immediatly. You sit down in the seat with your bag in your lap and wait. Once the row has filled and the row in front has filled, all bags are passed to the isle seat, who shoves them all into the overhead bins one by one for the entire row. While you are sitting down with your bag in your lap, you have a couple moments to pull out whatever items you will immediatly need and prep your bag to be stowed. I do not know if the method has a specific name, but I experienced it on three separate occations going to or from deployments. This seating method basicly reduces all stopages from stowing bags and from seat shuffling to nearly zero.

This however would basicaly never work for a civillian flight for many reasons. People traveling together and trust being the major issues. General travelers will likely not trust in handing their bag of personal belongings to a random stranger to have them stuff it into the overhead, and the random isle-seat passenger will probably not be willing to do the extra work of putting 5-7 bags into he overhead one after another. (As I said, trans-pacific flights, where it's two isles and 7-8 seats in the middle row and 4-5 in each side row, and sometimes even an upstairs and downstairs.) People traveling in groups would want to all sit together, and this seating method has basicly zero promise that they will even be in the same row, as by the time they get to their seats, the group might be split between two entirly different sections.

So while this seating method is highly efficent, it can basicly only occur when every single person involved is on the same page, knows the plan, and is basicly ordered 'this is how this is going to happen so just shut up and do it because it's not up for debate'

I feel like CGP Grey made this content while having a 12 hour layover for his flight

The fastest way, and applicable in low cost airlines, would be to not assign seats in advance, but print the seat allocation at the gate. This way, we can fill out the plane back to front and window to aisle simultaneously, and maintain groups sitting together.

You could position all the chairs in the waiting room in the exact order as the plane is. Every chair has the same number as in the plane. So basically let people organize themselves first before boarding while the plane is being cleaned.

The Steffen Perfect gave me goosebumps.

What’s actually kind of funny is that a flight I went on recently actually used the Steffen perfect. Or a close modification of it. Though it was a smaller flight than normal. We were able to board like 60 people in like 10-15 minutes.

True slowest method of plane packing... Combine "Front to Back" with "Aisle to Window" Maximizes full stop stows and seat shuffling & minimizes pullaways and parallels Like "Steffen Perfect" but the exact opposite.

The problem with steffen “perfect” is that the time you save with the actual boarding you lose trying to get everyone in line

Flew with JAL, and they used the window-aisle method. Worked very well and it was a quick pushback

The problem with the window-middle-aisle thing is that families often sit together, and I don’t think a baby would be able to go on its own

This could easily be solved by having assigned seating in the waiting area. Each seat would have various numbers or labels that would correspond with the waiting area. People would come in and sit in their seat in the order they will be on the airplane. Then one entire row all window A seats could get up at the same time and single file go onto the plane back to front. Now airports have a variety of airplanes, and so it would not be needed to shuffle chairs, one could have different labels (green, blue, red,) and if using airplane A everyone sits in seats according to that color label. A flight attendent could walk around and help people as needed ahead of time, if there were difficulties in getting ready. It might also be easier to do every other row. (We are now boarding A seats even numbers, we are boarding A seats odd numbers.) If the seats were laid out carpet colors or tape on the carpet could make it easier for everyone to "know" where they are on the airplane. This could even include indications for bathrooms and or emergency exits. As parties want to board together, they wait till the last person in the party boards.

The final suggestion still relies on everyone within each group being precisely ordered back to front, otherwise you have the same stoppages