Costs add up for waiting

Most airlines allow firstclass and other elite customers to board first. After that, some fill the rear rows first and work toward the front.

Others fill window seats and work in toward the aisle. Some used to employ a hybrid called the reverse-pyramid. Southwest Airlines has random seating: There are no assigned seats — passengers sort things out themselves. They can pay extra to be near the front of the boarding line.

All of this matters more than you might think.

Passengers want to board early to find space in the overhead bins for their rolling carry-on bags. For airlines, every minute that a plane sits at the gate makes it more likely that the flight will be late, hurting the carrier’s on-time rating and causing passengers to miss connecting flights.

There’s an economic cost to running late too. Researchers from Northern Illinois University say that at one major airline, which they didn’t identify, every extra minute at the gate added $30 in costs.

New ideas get tested

In recent weeks, United and American — the nation’s biggest and third-biggest carriers — have rolled out new strategies for faster boarding.

» American is letting passengers board sooner if they don’t put anything in the overhead bins. The idea is to get more people seated quickly before passengers with rolling bags clog the aisle.

» United reduced the number of boarding groups from seven to five while adding lanes in gate areas — from two to five at big airports. That’s designed to eliminate “gate lice” — the name road warriors use for those anxious passengers with big carry-ons who cause a traffic jam by creeping forward long before their group is called.

American and United tested their new procedures in a handful of airports before rolling them out across the country in time for the peak summer travel season. United CEO Jeff Smisek says his airline’s new method has helped cut boarding-related departure delays by more than 60 percent.

Two minutes a flight

In May, American began offering early boarding to passengers with just a personal item that fits under the seat. In a test at several airports, it cut boarding by two minutes per flight, according to Kevin Doeksen, the airline’s director

Before the 2010 merger of United and Continental airlines, United used the insideout method of boarding — window seats first, then middle, then aisle — while Continental went back-to-front. After much testing, the combined airline kept the United approach. Earlier this year, United set up additional boarding lines in the terminals to attack congestion in the gate area.

The back-to-front system, still used by many airlines, seems logical. But some studies have shown that it’s slower than windows-middle-aisle.

“If you’re on the aisle and somebody sitting next to you in the middle seat shows up, you need to unbuckle and maybe get up,” says Ken Bostock, United’s managing director of customer experience. “That can take 20, 25 seconds, and that happens a lot during the boarding process.”

Lou Agudo, a United gate agent who worked at Continental before the merger, says boarding by rows practically invited confusion. Just when he thought everyone in Group 2 had gone through, and he called Group 3 to start, “Twenty people would walk up and say they didn’t hear the announcement.” Some had missed the call for their group, while others decided to get in line no matter what, he says. The extra lanes have