American Airlines have been in the news lately about the merger with US Airways. Now that they are being a huge powerhouse in the airline market, they are trying to do everything to make things go smoothly.
What is the hardest part about flying? Most people will agree it is the long waits or sitting for a long time. What if an airline is willing to change what they are doing in order to cut down on the time. American Airlines is now trying to implement a new system that will shorten boarding times.
This relates to class when we discussed about bottleneck analysis. Bottleneck analysis is the part of the process that is lacking the most and has the lowest effective capacity in the system. Usually in order to increase efficiency, this is generally the first thing that is shortened. That is exactly what American Airlines is trying to do. They found the process that was the longest and try to cut it down. They did it by first finding the process that they can actually control and not things such as security or the actual time it takes to get from one destination to another.
American Airlines intends on improving on on-time performance. “American’s new method involves allowing passengers who are traveling light, with only a carry-on item that fits under the seat in front of them, to board early, before the second group” (Forbes). Basically, the order of the boarding schedule is now changed. This process did not take anything out but simply was an order change. By changing the order, the time is now reduced by two minutes. It does not seem like two minutes is a big deal but when there are 3,000 flights a day, which saves a lot of time.
Virgin Airlines did do something similar to this but decided to stop the program in 2011. Some of the problems they faced was the debate about how big an item would have to be in order to qualify for an carry on or people being dishonest about putting their bags in the overhead compartment. They personally thought that it would be better off not doing the program anymore. American Airlines so far in the tests have not ran to any of those problems. Soon this will be implemented in all American Airline flights.
Do you think American Airlines will run in to a similar problems Virgin had when they do it on a nationwide scale? What do you think the extra time will do on the performance of the flights? Will this plan help American Airlines to gain more market share and become the top airline?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/american-airlines-airways-merge-article-1.1264739
