On the Airbus A350-900, JAL’s main wide-body aircraft for domestic flights, the L1 door was previously reserved for First Class and Class J passengers, and the L2 door was reserved for regular seat passengers. The new boarding method is to use the L1 door for the right side of the cabin (rows F to K) behind Class J.
In the new boarding system, Group 3 guides passengers to rear seats and window seats (rows A and K), and Group 4 guides all passengers (Group 5 is eliminated). The new boarding system will guide all passengers in Group 4 (eliminating Group 5). Priority for window seats has already been used by other airlines, but the joint research by JAL and Tokyo Tech targets wide-body, twin-aisle aircraft, and the L1 door (forward door), L2 door (near Class J) and boarding bridges will be used in a significantly different manner.
Until now, the system has been divided into three groups, starting with priority boarding for pregnant women, children, and wheelchair users, then Group 1 and 2 (priority boarding) for first class passengers and holders of senior member status, Group 3 for rear seats, Group 4 for the center portion of the cabin, and Group 5 for all passengers.
On September 11, JAL and Tokyo Institute of Technology announced the results of a joint study to review the boarding order and reduce in-flight congestion. In addition, a new boarding procedure has been introduced on wide-body aircraft on domestic routes starting today.
Change of doors and boarding bridges to be used
L1 door: First Class, Class J
L2 door: Regular seat
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L1 door: First Class, Class J, Regular seats rows F, G, H, J, K
L2 door: Regular seats A, B, C, D, E rows
This joint research began in FY2022, and by 2023, they will have installed multiple 360-degree cameras in the actual aircraft to capture images of the cabin during boarding, investigate mechanisms such as where passengers stop and where congestion tends to occur, and build a boarding simulation model.
According to Toshiyasu Obutsu, Professor and Director of the Center for Educational Facilities and Environment, School of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental and Social Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, who explained the joint research, detailed observation of boarding behavior such as the time, minutes, and seconds passengers passed through the boarding gate, whether they were in a group or alone, whether their baggage would fit under the seat or need to be lifted to the rack, and how long it would take to stow them on the rack. Based on the data obtained, he built his own simulation model and tested boarding scenarios by combining 12 different boarding methods and two different boarding bridges.
The boarding method has been determined based on approximately 1,000 trials, and is expected to shorten the boarding process by approximately 50 seconds. For example, for a flight departing at 12:00 noon, priority boarding will begin at around 11:40, and Group 1 and Group 2 guidance will begin at 45 minutes, reducing the average boarding time from approximately 20 minutes to just over 19 minutes.
Although the 50-second reduction may be hard to feel from the overall time required of 20 minutes, it is expected to improve two of the major factors contributing to congestion during boarding: blocking the aisle with baggage storage and the situation where aisle-side passengers are seated first and window-side passengers arrive later, especially the latter, On-site removal of boarding bridges as soon as possible will lead to more efficient operations for workers and quicker departure preparations.
© Source travel watch
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