Will Airlines Use Flying Carpets?
A Flying Carpet
One Australian engineer, Rob Wallace of Round Peg Innovations, thinks he may have a solution. He calls it his flying carpet and he launched it at Passenger Terminal Expo this week. You might be forgiven for thinking that the flying carpet concept is a game when you first see it. It is just that, a carpet. It is divided into 20 rows of seats mimicking the passenger seat layout on a plane. The first forty passengers are called forward and they stand on the squares that relate to their seat assignments. Because the carpet is a reduced scale if you stand on one sea row you also take up the space of the row in front and the row behind. If another person in the same group can’t stand on their own square seat assignment, then they just wait until the first group moves off. In essence it is a game after all, a game of musical chairs only the chairs are airline seats. If you don’t make it you go back to the next attempt.
How the Flying Carpet works - click to enlarge
The logic behind this is that when you board the plane using the flying carpet method you have enough room to stow your hand baggage without disturbing someone else or being disturbed yourself. By the time you’re settled the next group is coming up the aisle. Wallace reckons that it will speed up boarding but also improve the aggravation factor that is often felt by passengers when they have to queue or get jostled. Five or six groups should be sufficient to fill most planes.
Does the idea work?
Because it is so new no airline has taken up the scheme. Or airport for that matter. But the first one that does will get acres of publicity as they realise how the media loves an odd story. And for passengers, this new and radical approach might be the salvation of some of the hassle that we get when we board aircraft.
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Hmmmm im not so sure…… the idea of 49 people legging it to the “carpet”, still pushing, seems like it could be comical to watch…. more visualisation required, me thinks… is there a you-tube video of this being used yet??? (Someone should try this out!)
Yes, someone (eg.an airline)should run trials, but as yet no-one has been willing to provide an airport & plane. So there’s no real-world video but check out the YouTube video of the computer simulation which shows how much faster the Flying Carpet fills the plane, on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJjF7ph2h4
As for jostling for position on the carpet I don’t think it will be any worse than usual. In fact probably a lot more orderly as most people realise that it is much easier to be in the right order so that they won’t be held up or have to push past others inside the plane.