Future of Boarding May Be Seating By Carry On

Airlines and their passengers are constantly looking to save time. A new study reports some valuable boarding minutes could be saved if passengers are seated on the plane by how many carry-on bags they have with them.

As any traveler knows, boarding time is prolonged by fliers trying to squeeze past people cramming bags into overhead bins. The new study from New York’s Clarkson School of Business suggests spreading around the people with different amounts of carry-ons. Each row would have someone with no bags, someone with one, and another with two. Folks would still be boarded back to front — save for First and Business Class — but the bag number would also be taken into consideration.

The new method has only been tested out via a computer program, but results indicate average boarding time could be cut by 3 percent if both seating placement and baggage amount be taken into consideration, compared to just doing the back-to-front method.

Read more in the Los Angeles Times, which has reports on potential “quiet zones” on planes and the rules on taking weed in and out of Denver International Airport now that Colorado legalized recreational pot (did you know you could fly out of LAX with a bag of weed?).