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Now boarding

When we call your seat number, that is. Or your row. Or all ticketholders. Listen carefully, because airlines are changing the way they fill the seats.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published June 28, 2006

There are big changes afoot - make that "ahoof" - for us cattle flying back in the cheap seats.

Airlines are changing the way they herd us onto airplanes.

Not surprisingly, they're moving in different directions.

The biggest news comes from Southwest Airlines, known as much for free-for-all seating as its trademark low fares.

For the first time in Southwest's 35-year history, the all-coach carrier will give customers assigned seats in a limited test starting July 10.

No promises that Southwest will embrace reserve seating and abandon the "cattle call" boarding process. And it won't happen before the airline upgrades reservations technology in 2008, says chief executive Gary Kelly.

But letting passengers reserve a seat on the aisle or in a roomier emergency row would go a long way toward winning over choosy and higher-paying business travelers.

Competitors are busy, too. JetBlue, United, AirTran and Northwest all have changed how they board passengers in the past year.

Their goal is to become more like Southwest, which can unload a plane, board new passengers and get everything else done for takeoff in about 25 minutes - faster than anyone else in the business.

Planes don't make money sitting on the ground. If airlines reduce the "turn time" at airports, they can squeeze more flying each day out of the same number of aircraft.

That means you can make more revenue-generating trips or retire older planes and still keep the same schedule. Commercial aviation consultant Scott Hamilton explains the math like this:

(15 minutes per flight) X (eight or nine flights per day) X (400 planes) = Serious Money.

The time it takes for passengers to get into their seats has increased 50 percent since 1970, according to a study by Boeing.

Researchers blame more people lugging carry-on bags and "passenger demographics," such as more families with children, seniors and first-time fliers attracted by cheap tickets from low-fare competition.

They cause "choke points" familiar to every frequent flier.

There's the guy jamming an aquarium-sized roller bag into an overhead bin. Or the parent blocking an aisle while refereeing a fight between two kids over who gets the window seat.

Airlines traditionally boarded the coach cabin from the back row to the front. Some now admit that's likely to cause traffic jams.

United announced plans in December to board passengers sitting in window seats first, then fill them in toward the center - a system nicknamed "Wilma" for window, middle and aisle.

Delta calls passengers in zones that alternate between separate parts of the cabin, front to rear or side to side, to allow more people to find seats without tripping over each other.

America West uses a five-step, modified Wilma with back window seats first, then front windows and back middles and ending with front aisles. The "Reverse Pyramid" will be coming to merger partner US Airways next year.

Last month, Northwest adopted random boarding. Coach passengers line up on their own and go to assigned seats in no specific order. (First-class and elite-level fliers, families with kids and disabled people still get to board first.)

Northwest says the process cuts an average of seven minutes off boarding times.

Not everyone loves the idea. Alaska Airlines used random boarding for two years but changed in May to one that customers consider "more passenger-friendly and orderly," said spokeswoman Amanda Tobin.

So whose plan is best? Most experts say Southwest's first-come, first-served boarding gets people seated fastest.

Left to their own devices, people tend to find seats more quickly and stay out of one another's way.

The airline will try out various boarding schemes to find out which works best during the reserve-seating tests with 200 flights from San Diego.

If the experiment shows Southwest can sell more tickets without angering current customers, slowing down boarding or adding costs, CEO Kelly wrote in a company blog, "I don't see a reason not to do it."

Sounds like a mooooove in the right direction.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384. Road Life appears every other Wednesday.

[Last modified June 28, 2006, 01:22:05]