Have you ever been at an airport and thought: damn, I really wish all of these other passengers would get themselves moving onto the plane a bit faster? That way we would not be so stressed, delayed, annoyed (delete as appropriate). This post is a starting point to discuss what to do about this!
Ryanair has the simplest policy – just get the people to run for the plane and “choose their seats” on board. This is all very well, but all the passengers have different sorts of preferences for the different kinds of seats. Tall people want the emergency exit rows, people wanting a quiet flight take window seats, those wanting a quick escape want the front and back rows.
Hence an inevitable ‘bunching’ takes place as people try to take the first and last rows, while everyone else queues in the cold. People also have a tendency to take the window seat and the aisle seat, and leave the middle seat free. As Ryanair planes are almost always full, this leads to more delays when people have to get up and move.
I wonder whether the solution here would be to inform people while they are boarding to move towards the centre of the plane (maybe this could even be announced in the terminal?) and to not leave any middle seats free.
For airlines that allocate seats, the situation is somewhat easier, especially as these plans also have the boom to connect them to the airport, rather than the steps that the cheap airlines use. But people never get on the plane in a sensible order, especially as the business class people board first. Buses from the terminal always complicate matters too – boarding at Ljubljana is a horrible mess any time the buses are used.