Queuing Up And the Elbowers

It really is an interesting social experiment to watch the passenger herding patterns about 20 minutes before boarding a plane. Prior to this mysterious 20 minute mark most people are sitting calmly in the gate area reading magazines, thumb typing on smart phones, playing electronic games, and for the most part keeping to themselves. At about 22 minutes before the scheduled boarding time some odd spell takes over and people begin to shuffle toward the boarding lanes. Here’s where things get interesting. Most airlines now have some form of a zone numbering system. All the Zone 1 passengers go first, followed by Zone 2, etc. until the plane is boarded. For some odd reason, a significant number of passengers feel compelled to ignore the numbering process and elbow themselves to the front of the line.

Sure, we could remind these elbowers that we’re all going to the same place (doesn’t seem to matter to them). We could politely inform them they need to wait until their number is called (suddenly they don’t understand English). We could ignore them and see if they make it through the gate agent out of sequence (my personal favorite…I’ve noted the elbowers succeed about 30% of the time!). Or we could develop a better plan.

I’m not sure what works best for boarding the plane. It doesn’t seem to matter if an airline tries to load from back to front or load the window seats first followed by the middle and then the aisle. No matter the approach, the elbowers are lurking to get a jump on getting ahead of the line.

The best system I’ve seen for handling the elbowers is at the United Airlines terminal in Hong Kong. (Note: I’m an United frequent flyer and the ONLY place I’ve seen this done is Hong Kong. United, are you listening? Check out your gate agents in Hong Kong. They. Are. Amazing.). At the gate in Hong Kong there are designated areas for each of the zone numbers. It’s simple, the gate agents use the retractable queuing tape and create an area for the people in each zone to mill about. The brilliance of the system is the agent walks among the passengers, looks at their boarding pass, and makes sure they are in the proper zone. This completely avoids the massive clustering that takes place otherwise and people seem to actually be willing to comply to be placed somewhere while they wait for their turn. I’m certain there is still some elbowing that takes place within each holding area, but it’s contained within each zone.

Somehow, someway, all the ticketed passengers ultimately get on the plane. While the process can get frustrating, it helps to take a big yoga breath and try to relax because watching the whole process can actually be quite entertaining.

Looking forward to hear about other interesting queuing processes.

Until next time,

Kari On and Keep Traveling