Airplane boarding is a time-consuming procedure due to a number of factors. First of all, passengers cannot pass each other in the aisles, but also stress is experienced in finding the seat or the space to store hand luggage and some passengers repack their luggage in the aisle. To reduce boarding time and improve the overall boarding experience a light guiding hand luggage system (GHL-System) was developed within the PASSME project. Due to the GHL passengers in the airplane see a light in the overhead bin which will shine more bright coming closer. This GHL-system did reduce stress levels while boarding and indicated a time saving of 3-4 minutes on a Boeing 737-800 flight with 189 passengers. Indicating a personal luggage spot located near the passenger seat might solve the problem of passengers not being able to find their space. Further research is needed on actual flight conditions to prove the effect of this system.@en

The airplane (de)boarding process is not organized optimally. The goal of this paper is to search for improvement possibilities. In this paper literature is reviewed, boarding characteristics are studied in a field study and a pilot study with a new way of hand luggage stowing is performed. Computer simulations indicate that there are more efficient boarding methods than those currently in use, like the reverse pyramid method which starts window seat columns in the back and ends with aisle seat columns in the front. The literature also shows that hand luggage stowing in the overhead lockers can block other passengers increasing the boarding time. Also, the field observations and the pilot test indicate that hand luggage stowing could block the aisle and is one of the main elements in boarding that influences passenger experience and boarding time. Training and preparing the boarding process could potentially reduce the boarding time by 3-4 minutes, but further research is needed to prove this.@en