Distributed boarding for passenger planes

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torginus

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I just had a rather mundane, idea regarding boarding aircraft.
I think a major inconvenience for air travel is boarding/disembarking at airports, and getting to/from the airport, which is often many miles away from our destination.

It occured to me, what if, instead of having to go through the painful boarding process at an airports huge, central terminal, there could be multiple, smaller terminal strewn throughout cities.
Then one could just show up at one of these, go through the luggage check, and then get on a special bus. This bus would drive straight to the airport without stopping, drive up next to the terminal, from which people could directly get on the airplane.
Obviously, due to the somewhat reduced security and skipping the luggage hand-over, this would be limited to domestic flights and carry-on luggage, but I feel like this could be a huge time-saver.

This is not some super-elaborate high-tech concept, so I think this could be easily implemented.
What do you think? Is there some obvious flaw with this idea? Has this been attempted before?
 
I can't speak to the logistics or economics of the proposal but the security implications are scary. It would seem on the surface that all one would have to do to hijack anything up to a 737 is hold-up a bus in transit. It's all too easy to envisage a "traffic incident" being arranged and the bus being forcibly boarded in the chaos, before being waved on through. A terminal is an altogether more secure arrangement. If it could be replaced, it would have been by now.

Really not likely while the 9/11 generation are still alive, I'm afraid!
 
I dunno, this danger hinges on the fact that the integrity of the bus could not be verified, throughout it's journey. But I think that's rather easy to do - just ensure that the nobody gets on or off the bus throughout its journey - just have a live camera feed going. If these security protocols are violated (like in the scenario you mentioned), just don't let the bus in at the airport. I don't think you bypass these very simple checks bar some Hollywood spy movie shenanigans.
 
This really seems to be more trouble than help.

The cost of a single security screening facility is now pushed to multiple sites around the city. And the "attack surface" of the sanitized zone is huge.

The airline has to absorb the cost of running buses (multiple for each flight?). Again, cost escalates.

Schedule risk rises dramatically. As it stands, if there is a traffic jam and a couple of passengers miss a flight, that's on them and the airline can usually rebook them at their own discretion. If there is a traffic jam and a bus full of passengers is late, the airline has responsibility for either holding the plane or rebooking dozens of people.

Etc. I don't see an actual upside here. Honestly, screening delays (the only actual issue this might address) are relatively rare.

I thought this was going to be about the value of boarding aircraft through multiple jetways to speed up embarkation. Or the various OR studies of the most efficient way to organize boarding queues (aisle seats last, back of the plane first, etc.)
 
Well @TomS addresses the logistic, economic and security issues. It really does fall down on all 3 pillars I'm afraid. It does nothing but add complexity. Great fodder for a Dragon's Den episode but the instant it hits a regulatory body.....
 
torginus said:
I just had a rather mundane, idea regarding boarding aircraft.
I think a major inconvenience for air travel is boarding/disembarking at airports, and getting to/from the airport, which is often many miles away from our destination.

It occured to me, what if, instead of having to go through the painful boarding process at an airports huge, central terminal, there could be multiple, smaller terminal strewn throughout cities.
Then one could just show up at one of these, go through the luggage check, and then get on a special bus. This bus would drive straight to the airport without stopping, drive up next to the terminal, from which people could directly get on the airplane.
Obviously, due to the somewhat reduced security and skipping the luggage hand-over, this would be limited to domestic flights and carry-on luggage, but I feel like this could be a huge time-saver.

This is not some super-elaborate high-tech concept, so I think this could be easily implemented.
What do you think? Is there some obvious flaw with this idea? Has this been attempted before?
Click to expand...
The boarding process is painful because it takes a long time. That can be solved with extra manpower, it's more flexible to do that at the airport rather than at distributed boarding spots - at the airport you can shuffle people around at a moment's notice to respond to congestion. If one of your distributed boarding spots is overloaded, you have to transport personnel from another location.
 

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