Can Southwest Airways, the airline that made the 10-minute flip (deplane one flight and board the subsequent one in 10 minutes) well-known again in 1972, shave off simply three minutes between every flight these days? That’s the query Lisa Hingson and her deputy Kaci McCartan are attempting to reply with a handful of gate-side improvements presently being examined on the airline’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport (ATL) base.
Hingson and McCartan are members of Southwest’s innovation workforce, which is tasked with discovering methods to enhance the passenger expertise, and on this case, serving to increase the airline’s operational efficiency.
The ideation behind this undertaking started nicely earlier than the coronavirus pandemic, and the workforce even managed to provide you with 35 ideas that would assist shorten every flip. Nonetheless, all of this work was shelved when the pandemic started, particularly as tight turns weren’t as onerous to realize with load components at historic lows.
Associated: 11 ways in which Southwest is making an attempt to enhance the journey expertise in 2023
In current months — however the airline’s large operational meltdown throughout the holidays — Hingson, McCartan and the broader workforce have spent weeks within the innovation lab at Southwest’s Dallas headquarters refining the 35 ideas and boiling them down to only seven of essentially the most possible ones.
Quick ahead to immediately, and the innovation workforce is tenting out at 4 of the airline’s 18 gates in Atlanta by means of March 3. That’s as a result of gates C13 to C16 are performing as a real-world stress take a look at for the improvements that Hingson and McCartan first concocted within the lab.
In reality, TPG simply visited the airline’s Atlanta base for a primary take a look at these improvements in motion. A few of the enhancements might by no means roll out to all of Southwest’s 121 airports, however right here’s a take a look at what the airline is testing.
Designated preboarding areas
Southwest does issues in a different way. In contrast to different carriers, Southwest doesn’t have assigned seats. As a substitute, flyers line as much as board (usually) within the order during which they test in.
Passengers who use wheelchairs, together with these needing particular help, are invited to preboard, however this course of typically causes huge bottlenecks, in accordance with McCartan. It’s not at all times clear the place the wheelchairs and preboard passengers ought to line up, and there’s typically no devoted space within the holdroom for all these flyers.
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As a part of the take a look at, Southwest put in a color-coded carpeted space that demarcates the place these passengers ought to line up.
Every of the 4 Atlanta gates has a unique coloured carpet. After espresso spilled on the yellow carpet on day one, the innovation workforce determined that darkish blue would possible look the very best in locations with a lot of foot visitors, like airports.
Twenty first-century boarding pillars
While you test in with Southwest, you’re assigned a boarding group letter and quantity, which tells you while you’ll get onto the airplane to select your seat.
Most Southwest gates have steel pillars that present you the place to line up when your boarding group is named. Nonetheless, until you hearken to the bulletins, it’s onerous to know when it’s your flip to board.
Southwest’s innovation workforce is making an attempt to repair that. To maneuver passengers extra rapidly, the workforce is debuting digital pillars with built-in screens that show real-time boarding info.
The screens present what group is boarding and when it’s your flip to line up. They even function built-in yellow and blue LED lights to draw your consideration; blue indicators that your facet is lining up and on the point of board, whereas yellow signifies that your group is boarding.
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It’s onerous to think about these stanchions not being an enchancment over the present ones. The largest subject for Southwest, nevertheless, is discovering energy retailers for all of the screens, one thing that the innovation workforce might want to determine in the event that they determine to roll out these digital pillars extra broadly.
A brand new solution to see bulletins
As of late, many vacationers use noise-canceling headphones to drown out distractions in an airport. (I’m personally a giant fan of Apple’s AirPods Professional.)
If you happen to’re carrying your headphones, although, you might not hear an vital announcement — until you’re sitting at considered one of Southwest’s take a look at gates.
Along with exhibiting dwell boarding info, the brand new digital pillars additionally show visible bulletins, together with up to date flight standing and whether or not gate brokers want extra gate-checked luggage.
Although you received’t get a full transcript of what the gate agent says, these visible bulletins must be sufficient to seize your consideration.
Self-service on the gate
It’s onerous to think about that that is being rolled out as an innovation in 2023, however Southwest is trialing whether or not including a self-serve kiosk within the gate space will shorten the road to talk with a counter-service agent.
If practically each different main U.S. airline is any indication, the reply is probably going sure. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless one thing that Southwest is testing in Atlanta.
The innovation workforce needs to see whether or not prospects will use these kiosks to reprint boarding passes, generate bag tags for gate-checked carry-ons and add infants to their reservation, all with out chatting with an agent.
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The airline can be contemplating including the power to buy last-minute boarding group upgrades at these kiosks, which may possible additional scale back the road to talk to an agent.
An all-in-1 iPad app
Talking of brokers, Southwest is making mobile-friendly variations of the instruments that brokers must grasp a flip, together with the power to print bag tags, talk with the onboard crew and monitor the variety of wheelchair and particular providers passengers.
This expertise is powered by means of a brand new inside iPad app that the innovation workforce is piloting in Atlanta and distributing to a number of passenger-facing staff, together with operations brokers, customer support brokers, customer support supervisors and inflight crews.
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The all-in-one iPad app lets brokers accomplish a lot of their on a regular basis duties. It additionally powers many different improvements, together with visible bulletins and team-wide chats.
For instance, earlier than the debut of this iPad app, gate brokers wanted to stroll right down to the airplane to ask the flight crew in the event that they have been able to board. Typically, an agent would wish to make the journey a number of instances, particularly if the cleansing crew arrived late or if the airplane was experiencing a technical malfunction.
Now, with the brand new chat function, the gate agent can wirelessly join with the flight attendants — saving them time-consuming journeys to the airplane and hopefully serving to pace up the boarding course of.
A jet bridge occasion
When you’ve scanned your boarding go, the subsequent huge bottleneck is normally a protracted wait within the jet bridge. To attenuate that, the Southwest workforce got here up with three thrilling improvements which are poised to rework the jet bridge expertise.
The primary is the set up of Bluetooth audio system within the jet bridge, which play (royalty-free) disco, digital dance music, hip-hop and children music throughout boarding and deplaning.
Listening to music at a excessive beats-per-minute price is scientifically confirmed to get individuals shifting sooner and extra effectively, in accordance with McCartan, which is precisely what Southwest needs throughout some of the essential phases of the flip.
Higher but, the flight crew may also management what’s taking part in on the audio system, so if they’re working out of overhead bin area or there are solely center seats left, the crew can play a prerecorded message over the audio system (full with Southwest’s well-known “ding” sound) to assist handle your expectations for what’s occurring on board.
While you’re ready on the jet bridge, you’re a fairly captive viewers. That’s sometimes why you’ll discover most of those partitions presently lined with airline- and travel-focused adverts.
Nonetheless, the innovation workforce can be testing whether or not displaying ideas and methods for navigating the Southwest boarding course of will assist pace up the method. Up to now, the workforce is listening to extremely constructive suggestions from rare Southwest vacationers, so it’ll be fascinating to see if this initiative rolls out extra broadly.
Ramp info show
Whereas all of the aforementioned improvements are designed for “above-wing” operations, there’s one the workforce is trialing for ramp staff — a dynamic show posted outdoors the gate that exhibits vital preflight info.
These shows present a countdown till departure time, together with different vital info, such because the standing of the boarding course of. Maybe most significantly, these shows alert the ramp workforce when there are gate-checked luggage ready to be put into the cargo maintain.
Beforehand, ramp employees would wish to trek up the steps to the jet bridge to see if there have been luggage ready for them. Typically, these brokers would wish to climb the steps three to 4 instances every flight, squandering precious time that might be spent on different vital predeparture duties, McCartan informed TPG. These new dynamic shows ought to remove these wasted journeys, giving Southwest’s ramp staff a giant effectivity increase.
In fact, it’s price mentioning that many main airways have efficiently rolled out these shows already, so whereas this is perhaps an innovation for Southwest, it’s previous information for a number of the airline’s opponents.
Backside line
When planes sit on the bottom between flights, Southwest doesn’t make any cash. That’s why the well-known 10-minute flip was born again in 1972, because the fledging airline charted its solution to profitability.
As Southwest has grown up to now 50 years, so too has the complexity of every flip. There are extra processes, extra assets and extra paperwork required to get passengers deplaned and boarded.
If the airline can tighten every flip by just some minutes, it’d have the ability to squeeze yet one more flight a day from every plane. It’s that top utilization that results in low fares — and retains individuals on Southwest’s innovation workforce busy nowadays.
From digitalized boarding pillars and a model new cell app for gate brokers to a reimagined jet bridge expertise and different improvements, Southwest is working onerous to enhance flip instances.
Whether or not these improvements ever materialize outdoors the beta take a look at in Atlanta is anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, one factor is definite: After experiencing the business’s worst-ever meltdown over the vacations, Southwest must be going all-in on no matter it takes to spice up its operational reliability.
Further reporting by Caroline Tanner.
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