This application relates to boarding processes for boarding passengers onto vehicles, and particularly to passenger boarding for commercial airline flights.
Increases in passenger volume, security requirements and carrier cost cutting have made airline travel more demanding to passengers and the work forces that serve them throughout the process. One area where improvement is necessary concerns boarding, especially since current boarding processes consume too much time, require too much intervention by gate agents and other staff, require redundant actions and still leave passengers with uncertainty and demanding greater satisfaction.
These concerns extend to passenger baggage, and particularly as to whether a planned carry-on baggage item will be accommodated in the available space on the aircraft or whether it will have to be re-designated as checked baggage during the boarding process. Passengers who are faced with having to check a baggage item at the last minute need to take time to repack items to ensure that essentials (such as medication, as just one example) are immediately available in case a checked bag is lost over the course of the passenger's travel. When carrier's attempt to incent passengers to check baggage items at the last minute instead of carrying them on, staff time is required as the number of offers to be made is continually recalculated.
Described below are various enhancements to the boarding process intended to address the shortcomings of current practices.
According to one implementation, there is a method for improving boarding of passengers and baggage onto a flight. At a predetermined time before the scheduled departure of the flight, an eligible carry-on baggage items count of carry-on baggage items eligible for treatment as checked baggage items is determined. The eligible carry-on baggage items count is based on predetermined criteria comprising at least one of an aircraft type for the flight, a passenger load factor for the flight and carrier historical data relevant to the flight. If the eligible carry-on items count is greater than zero, then an offer to a passenger on the flight to have the passenger's carry-on baggage item treated as a checked baggage item is communicated, and the passenger's communication in response to the offer is received. For each accepted offer, eligible carry-on items count is decremented.
The offer to the passenger can be communicated during the passenger check-in procedure. The passenger check-in procedure can be carried out over the carrier's web site, or at a carrier kiosk, as just two examples. The predetermined time at which the eligible carry-on baggage items count is determined and offers are made can be at about 24 hours before the scheduled time of the flight.
The eligible carry-on baggage count can be based on at least a load factor for the flight, wherein the load factor is defined as a number of passengers checked in for the flight divided by the number of passenger seats available for the flight. The carrier historical data relevant to the flight can comprise data for passenger carry-on luggage volumes for past passenger traffic between the same city pairs as the present flight. The aircraft type for the flight can comprise carry-on baggage items capacity information, such as a number of carry-on baggage item storage bins and volumes for the bins.
The method can include determining whether a passenger is eligible to receive the offer based on the passenger's status, such as whether the passenger is a member of a carrier loyalty (or mileage) program.
According to another implementation, a method of scheduling boarding of passengers on a vehicle comprises dividing the vehicle into a multiple seating regions, setting a target number of passengers for each boarding group, rank ordering passenger seat assignments within each of the multiple seating regions according to a passenger priority corresponding to each respective passenger and set according to at least one predetermined criteria and assigning the rank ordered passengers to boarding groups in approximately equal numbers, thereby dispersing passengers of a same boarding group throughout the multiple seating regions of the aircraft.
The predetermined criteria on which the passenger priority is determined can comprise at least one of a special service designation (e.g., unaccompanied minors, disabled), membership in a passenger loyalty program for a carrier that operates the vehicle, a membership tier within the passenger loyalty program for the carrier that operates the vehicle, membership in another carrier's passenger loyalty program, use of a carrier-sponsored or other specific credit card and use of the carrier's website to complete the check in procedure, as some examples.
Additional criteria upon which priority and/or a separate intragroup priority can be assigned comprise at least one of a check-in time, a passenger loyalty program tier, a ticket price paid by the passenger, a designation indicating a source from which the ticket was purchased and a mode by which the passenger checked in for the flight, as some examples.
The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying figures.
According to a first implementation, a new boarding process provides for offering select passengers an opportunity to designate baggage items as checked baggage items instead of as carry-on baggage items as a part of the check-in process and on as-needed basis. In general, this opportunity begins well in advance of boarding, e.g., at 24 hours before the departure time for the flight. The offer is made to passengers as they check-in, such as over the internet, but it also possible to extend the offer via a kiosk or agent check-in procedure. The offer may to allow baggage items to be checked may be made without a fee, with a reduced fee (compared to the regular checked baggage fee) or with the same fee as the regular checked baggage fee. In general, each offer made would be limited to a single baggage item per passenger, but the program could be adopted as needed and in special situations to allow multiple items per passenger to be checked.
The as-needed basis for making offers to the passengers can be based on a number of factors. According to one approach, the carrier determines the anticipated volume of carry-on baggage items based on one or more criteria, including the type of aircraft for the flight, the load factor for the flight (defined as the number of passengers divided by the number of available seats), and historical data. Historical data can include, e.g., actual data on the number of carry-on items transported on past flights, which varies according to destination, time of year and other factors, but has been discovered to be trackable by specifying the “city pair” for the flight (i.e., the originating and destination cities). As one example, city pairs corresponding to long-stay leisure destinations typically have a much lower volume of carry-on baggage items than city pairs corresponding to short-stay business destinations. From the evaluation of the criteria, an eligible carry-on baggage item count is determined This count represents the desired number of carry-on baggage items that the carrier would desire to have to re-designated as checked baggage items in an effort to ensure sufficient space for remaining carry-on items and keep boarding time to a minimum. Aircraft may have space to accommodate one typical carry-on baggage item per passenger for only about 50-60% of passengers. Offers are made to passengers on a first available basis, or on some other basis, such as to passengers who are members of the carrier's loyalty (or mileage) program(s). For each offer that is accepted, the count is decreased and tracked until it reaches zero and no further offers are made.
As a result, gate agents need not spend time making repeated public address announcements with similar offers to passengers en masse during boarding, which takes their time away from other activities and makes the boarding area environment unpleasant. Also, under the new approach, participating passengers need not carry their qualifying baggage items through security checkpoints (rather, they are directed to drop them off like regular checked baggage items). Participating passengers avoid the need to open their baggage items and repack them. Other passengers who prepaid to check bags are not reminded of the offer for free checking of bags.
A representative method implementation 100 is shown in
As shown, the customer may interface with the system 200 via the communications link 204 using a computer, a smart phone, a tablet, or a kiosk, or in person or by telephone via the agent using any of the described devices or a carrier-specific device. The system makes the offer and receives the passenger's response via the communications link 204.
In advance of the flight, e.g., about 24 hours before the flight, the seat selections that passengers have made are accessed by the carrier to determine an inventory of available seats. For those passengers who have not selected seats, the carrier assigns them seats. At this point, the carrier has a preliminary determination of how confirmed passengers need to be accommodated and can take preliminary steps to divide the passengers in some fashion so as to make the boarding process run smoothly (subject, of course, to relatively minor changes in overall numbers up until departure). According to one implementation, the passengers are divided into boarding groups, and the passengers assigned to each boarding group are dispersed throughout the multiple regions of the plane.
To do so, the carrier ranks all of the confirmed passengers within each of the multiple physical regions of the aircraft according to a passenger priority. In the example, the carrier considers the aircraft to have four regions: front, middle front, middle back and back. (It is, of course, possible to use a fewer or greater number of regions depending up on the particular circumstances, including the size and physical layout of the aircraft.) In the example, the carrier targets each boarding group to have a size of 20 passengers. (Boarding groups of other sizes can also be used, depending upon the boarding conditions.) Accordingly, using an example of the Front region of the aircraft, once the passengers having seat assignments in the Front region are ranked according to their priority, then the first five passengers are assigned to Boarding Group A, the next five are assigned to Boarding Group B, the next five to Boarding Group C, and so on until all Front region passengers have been assigned to a Boarding Group. The Front region may comprise 20-40 passengers, depending upon the size of the aircraft and the passenger volume on the flight. This process is carried out for each of the multiple regions. As a result, it should be expected that there are about five passengers of each full boarding group (20 passengers) with seat assignments in each one of the four regions (5×4=20).
A program flow according to one implementation is shown in
As described in more detail below, the predetermined criteria on which the passenger priority is determined can comprise at least one of a special service designation, membership in a passenger loyalty program for a carrier that operates the vehicle, a membership tier within the passenger loyalty program for the carrier that operates the vehicle, membership in another carrier's passenger loyalty program and use of the carrier's website to complete the check in procedure, as some examples.
Additional criteria can be used to assign priority, including priority among passengers having the same first or primary priority level (e.g., both passengers are Gold 75 loyalty plan members.) Such additional criteria can include at least one of a check-in time, a passenger loyalty program tier (if different), a ticket price paid by the passenger, a designation indicating a source from which the ticket was purchased and a mode by which the passenger checked in for the flight, as some examples.
As shown in
Some additional features of new boarding process enhancements are described below. These new enhancements reduce customer stress during the boarding process, limit the length of the boarding line, reduce the amount of time spent standing in line, reduce the “back-up” which occurs on the jet bridge during boarding, allow priority to given not only by elite status, but by ticket price, purchase location (e.g. alaskaair.com vs. Orbitz) or payment method (e.g. Alaska Airlines Visa card vs. standard credit card)(as described above), reduce the number and length of public address announcements, create new “visual aids” to ensure a smooth boarding flow (see
In a text message boarding enhancement, during purchase at the carrier website or during Web Check-in, Kiosk Check-in or Agent Check-in, customers may choose to provide their mobile phone numbers to receive text messages when their respective groups are ready to board. Upon providing a mobile phone number, each participating customer receives a text confirming that he or she is signed up, along with a reminder of the carry-on baggage policy. During the boarding process, when the agent updates the electronic boarding sign indicating which group is boarding, a text is automatically sent to participating customers. A representative new “silent” boarding display is shown in
In view of the many possible embodiments to which the principles of the disclosed invention may be applied, it should be recognized that the illustrated embodiments are only preferred examples of the invention and should not be taken as limiting the scope of the invention. Rather, the scope of the invention is defined by the following claims. We therefore claim as our invention all that comes within the scope and spirit of these claims.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/847,470, filed Jul. 17, 2013, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61847470 | Jul 2013 | US |