The Contrarian

Desperate to make a buck airlines have commercialized the boarding process with disastrous results. Boarding an airplane is now a mad scramble to grab seats and store bags that resembles a college basketball game with both teams playing tenacious defense. Last year there were reports of near fistfights over storage space.

Changing from row by row boarding to zone seating was supposed to remedy all kinds of ills from cutting time on the ground to making the boarding process less of a hassle. Results of the experiment are mixed.

The idea is simple and logical—allow passengers sitting in window seats to board first, then call the middle seats and finally the aisles. Add to this a back to front bias and—Bingo—a plane will fill faster because fewer passengers will be in each other’s way. It even has a name, WILMA, (window, middle, aisle).

Wilma works like a champ when there are no other considerations and that’s where things get sticky. Airlines give special treatment to their best customers—blackberry-clicking, cell-phone-chattering, get-me-to-my-next-meeting business people. With enough frequent flyer miles to take a vacation on the moon, they board first—often earlier than their ticketed seat positions might permit.

Too many frequent fliers means too many people qualify for early boarding. So despite what your boarding pass says, there are only two boarding zones—early and late cattle call. Let’s just call this Wilma-plus (or minus). It brings back the old problem of gridlock in the aisles and introduces a new problem, the land rush for bin space.

Early cattle call passengers have their pick of the overhead bins, which rewards frequent fliers at the expense of others. Later boarding passengers may find that the bins over their seats are already occupied causing them to search for space and promoting log jams.

Airlines are getting better at reminding people of their carry-on limits—and charging for checked bags.  But extra privileges for frequent fliers means that occasional travelers bear more of the burden of checking a bag—and the risk of losing it.

According to the FAA the number of mishandled baggage complaints has risen every year since 2004 when many airlines introduced zone seating. There were 2.82 million complaints in 2004 rising to 4.42 million in 2007, a 64 percent increase in four years. No wonder there is fighting for bin space.

The overhead bins are common area. Anyone on the plane has equal access to them but giving some passengers preferential access to the bins through early boarding is unfair. Economists and sociologists refer to this unfairness as “the tragedy of the commons” and it happens whenever a common area reserved for the public good is privatized.

The only winner in such a tragedy is the party that usurps the commons for private gain. In this case, airlines have grabbed control of the bins to solve the nagging problem of lost baggage for their best customers while avoiding investment in upgrading baggage-handling systems that would benefit all customers.  The losers are a new class of customer who pays the same rates but receives fewer benefits—automatically.

Commercializing zone seating is a telltale sign of a crumbling infrastructure and the airlines have conveniently punted the problem to the customers who have no voice. Doing nothing risks real fistfights and delays. But the flying public is not likely to give up the security of carrying-on until the airlines and airports deal effectively with the problem of ensuring that bags are delivered to passengers promptly after a flight.

Rather than simply selling cheap seats (at a loss), airlines need to consider the total cost of providing a quality service and then charge accordingly.  That includes the cost of investments in baggage handling infrastructure that benefit all passengers. Higher ticket prices could result but realistic pricing might also lead to airlines actually making money. What a concept.