Boarding Airplanes
TLDR: Airplane security is a waste of time. Bags should be checked by default. Fast boarding and deplaning are possible with better algorithms.
Prerequisites: None
Not everyone gets the same amount of time in their lives. Some get many decades, while others have their lives snuffed out as children. Even two people who are born on the same day and die on the same day can have radically different amounts of time, depending on how they live. As an extreme case, a person could be in a coma for many years – essentially shortening the number of hours of life they have. But there are also more mundane examples of loss of life.
Sleeping, like being in a coma, is an easy example. It’s important for humans to sleep, and I by no means endorse trying to cut back on something vital to healthy life, but if there were a technology that allowed for constant wakefulness that had no major costs or side-effects, I think it would be very much like giving the average person several more decades of life. There would be a very meaningful way, in that world, that people would live longer lives. Sleep is necessary, but in a world where it wasn’t, it would generally be a waste of time. In the pursuit of Utopia we should try to break the chains of sleep and free people for more noble pursuits.
The distinction between waking hours and those in literal unconsciousness is not the important lesson here. The real story is that time can be wasted. If I space out, thinking useless thoughts, having no joy, doing nothing lasting, and helping no one, these moments are barely better than if I had simply ceased existing for a short period. The word “consciousness” to describe something other than being awake/asleep is often confusing, but there’s a way in which it’s quite apt. A person wandering around a dull gray life on autopilot, having no meaningful thoughts and sharing no deep connections with others… Well, they’re essentially asleep (or sometimes worse – at least sleeping people dream).
But there are also moments in life that are spent well – that celebrate the story of life and are saturated with conscious loving. These most extreme moments are sometimes called peak experiences, described by Abraham Maslow as "rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter."
Peak experiences are possible, but hardly guaranteed. They emerge in moments of flourishing: when people have time, freedom, wisdom, intellect, purpose, and self-knowledge, among other things. Sometimes these moments are born from adversity; winning a contest, having an epiphany, or having some other breakthrough can be one of the best things in life. But there is no law that says all hardship is for some later good. There is meaningful work to be done for every person, to free them from unconsciousness and lift up their spirits to a world of color and music.
And thus we now come to my main topic for this post: traveling on airplanes.
Traveling on airplanes kills people.
I don’t mean the fatalities from crashes. Airplanes are generally safer than other means of traveling the world. But rather, I mean that traveling by air robs people of time and pushes them into pits of unconsciousness.
I don’t really mean to be harsh about airplanes per se. Similar arguments can be applied at slower forms of transit, such as trains and cars. And of course air travel has the obvious advantage over other methods of being faster (and usually safer). People regularly rate their commutes as one of the least important parts of their day. If we were able to shorten these commutes by using, say, flying cars, it would be clearly good for saving time (and thus life/consciousness).
Air travel also has the advantage of literally flying through the heavens at incredible speed(!!). As we explore the topic of Utopia together I hope you occasionally notice ways in which our world today is very utopian from the perspective of almost all humans that have ever lived. Flying, even in a sealed metal tube, is an amazing thing when one steps back and sees with fresh eyes.
But there are ways to do better, particularly around the process of getting on (and off) an airplane. Between the moment one arrives at an airport to the moment of takeoff, wasted moments pile up, eating into the lives of travelers. These moments are not simply spent doing mindless things — they are wasted. It is not at all difficult to imagine a better world where things are done differently, in a way that is more efficient and life-affirming.
The Invisible TSA Graveyard
Let’s start with going through security. While the process (in the USA at least) has been slowly getting better overall since 2001, there’s still a large degree of waste involved in getting checked for weapons and explosives.
First, there’s the simple time involved. Lines form during peak periods of the day, when most travelers are present. IDs are checked. Laptops are separated from bags. Shoes and belts are taken off. There’s just this whole song-and-dance routine. If you’re lucky, you sign up for TSA PreCheck and the whole process takes less than five minutes per trip. If you’re unlucky you may find yourself detained, embarrassed, groped, or otherwise slowed down and harassed by the process.
About three million people fly on a given day in the USA. If we say that the average person wastes ten minutes of time and attention going through security (including standing in line), then the airport security process spends 57 years of human life each day, just from that. This is, in a very real sense, killing a person every day! (Remember: while the average lifespan is around 80 years, the average person spends about a third of that time asleep.)
But it gets worse. Because security has a small chance of a long delay, it is common for people to show up significantly early to the airport “just in case”. These extra minutes spent sitting in the airport terminal are much less likely to be wasted in the same way that a chaotic encounter with the TSA is, but there is waste here, regardless. Additionally, we must add the mental and spiritual costs of planning around being treated like a potential criminal. I’m not sure how many people have nervous breakdowns each day because of airport security, but I’m confident it’s significant. Minutes spent recovering are waste, just like minutes spent preparing and minutes spent actually going through the ordeal.
But it gets even worse. As mentioned above, airplanes are among the fastest and safest ways of getting from place-to-place, even with the hassle. As air-travel gets more scary and obnoxious, people start electing for slower and more dangerous methods of travel. In particular, Americans became much more likely to drive rather than fly in the years following 2001, and while this effect has faded significantly with time I would bet that it continues to persist to a real degree. Thousands of people have died from substituting driving for flying, even when we only count fatalities from traffic accidents, and ignores the huge cost from wasted time.
When we start to include the added costs of administering the TSA, paying all those people to be security guards, remodeling airports to allow for security checkpoints, and prohibiting friends and family from waiting at the terminal with those who are about to fly, the whole thing seems extremely wasteful. To pay for these costs we’d need a horrendous amount of terrorism in the counterfactual where after 9/11 there was a deliberate effort to keep flying as normal and just ignore the terrorists. Like, it seems plausible that even in the universe where there were two additional attacks on the scale of 9/11 in the USA we’re still coming out behind in terms of life lost and time wasted.
(I actually don’t believe that story, mostly because it seems implausible to me that people can just go on with their lives as though nothing happened after a large-scale terrorist attack. The added road accidents following 9/11 were not the TSA’s fault, for example. If there were no TSA, but people perceived air travel as very dangerous, then more time/lives would be potentially wasted. The real Utopian counterfactual would be if people, after orienting to the situation, took a deep breath and saw the terrorist attack as an outlier that did not make air travel significantly more dangerous. (Almost all of the fatalities on September 11th were from people in the World Trade Towers, after all.))
How much does the TSA protect us? How reasonable is this counterfactual where terrorism continues to be a huge problem?
The two best ways to judge this question, I think, are in asking how common terrorism is in general, and whether the TSA succeeds at stopping people who try to smuggle weapons onto planes. As it turns out, terrorism in the West is very rare (though it’s fairly common in some parts of the world), including in the days before airports got locked down.
And as for the TSA’s success rate… Well, Red Team exercises where professionals were hired to try and slip weapons or explosives past the TSA, they succeeded 95% of the time (not that the TSA Red Team procedures are any good). As far as I can tell, there were approximately 4 terrorist plots involving airplanes and the USA since September, 2001:
In December 2001 the Shoe Bomber (al-Qaeda operative) successfully got explosives onto an airplane, but failed to detonate them or kill anyone.
The TSA responded by making people take off their shoes and scan them.
In 2006 there was a plot by a group of Muslim extremists in the UK to smuggle liquid explosives onto an airplane. It was thwarted by British police beforehand, as a result of surveilling those connected to al-Qaeda.
The TSA responded by prohibiting (and later, limiting) taking liquids past security checkpoints.
In 2009 the Underwear Bomber (al-Qaeda operative) successfully got explosives onto an airplane, but failed to successfully detonate them or kill anyone.
The TSA responded by installing invasive scanners that probably gave a few people cancer. A few years after those scanners were replaced by the less invasive, less radioactive devices that exist in US airports today.
In 2010 there was a successful suicide attack where a plane was flown into an IRS office in Austin, Texas. The pilot, who was upset at the IRS, killed one other person and injured several others. Whether this counts as “terrorism” or just “crime” is up to you.
And that’s… it…? As far as I know, the TSA has never directly stopped any attacks, and are instead pulled around like a puppet by the very few attacks that were attempted over the course of two decades. It seems very plausible to me that in the absence of any increased security measures following 9/11 that not a single additional attack would have occurred. (I don’t know this, by any means, but it seems plausible).plausible.)
Utopian Security
By this point you may have guessed how I think air travelers go through security in Utopia: they don’t. In Utopia there are no security checkpoints, pat-downs, or even metal detectors. The airport security guards mostly try to discreetly stay out of the way or give people directions. Friends and family are free to come and go, and people are encouraged to show up at the airport just ten minutes prior to boarding to reduce congestion.
The ability to, during a layover, leave the airport for a half-hour and then come back without having to go through security again means that food, drink, and other items at airports are cheaper, due to increased competition with nearby stores. Some airports have thus integrated shopping malls, arcades, and other businesses into their layouts that are good enough to attract random people in the area, even if those shoppers aren’t flying.
Which is not to say that there are no precautions put in place to prevent terrorism. Tough cockpit doors lock from the inside and are closed by default, protecting the pilot from random passengers. Flight attendants are given free training by the government on how to handle someone with a weapon or explosive (or if someone is simply belligerent or having a psychotic episode), and paid a small wage bonus (by the government) if they have martial-arts expertise. Cities have very strict rules about where aircraft are and aren’t allowed to be, and municipal defenses are allowed to fire upon aircraft in clear violation of the boundaries. But notably none of these protections demand that travelers participate in security theater or debase themselves to random searches or questionnaires.
Utopia doesn’t have as much of a problem with deranged people, religious extremists, and political martyrs, for a host of reasons. But in the rare case where a particularly successful maniac either takes down a plane, or flies one into a building, there is a common-knowledge story that is deployed: “A very strange and disturbing thing happened today. The world is big, and so these rare things are bound to occur. It (so far) does not appear to be part of a trend, or like it merits a large change in how we live, as a society. We will thus do our best to counteract the bias in our minds that wants us to react, and instead redirect our focus to the common problems that our society faces regularly, and try to improve those so that they might be as rare as the tragedy that happened today.” Media outlets are discouraged from talking about it, lest it further the aims of terrorists, aggrandize villains, or cause social contagion. Academics, journalists, and others on the look-out for new trends or dynamics discuss the event in elite circles with an informed awareness of how their biases can distort their thoughts.
Time to Bored
I think it’s time now to turn attention to the second issue I have with boarding airplanes: the actual boarding process. I’m hardly the first person to notice that the way people (especially Americans who are terrible at queueing!) get on and off airplanes is inefficient. (Or that the TSA sucks, for that matter!) Here’s the fabulous CGP Grey, for example:
For those who don’t want to watch an 8-minute video: The research shows that having people board (with assigned seats) randomly is better than having boarding groups. Loading front-to-back (as is done in many flights in the USA) is the slowest boarding method, and there is an optimal method if you’re willing to line people up in a specific order that doesn’t have people who are sitting together (like families) boarding at the same time.
But most importantly: the biggest delay when enplaning and deplaning is dealing with carry-on bags. Notice this, the next time you’re on an airplane. Dealing with overhead bins is a huge time-sink.
And remember: if you can shorten the average passenger’s flight by 10 minutes, that’s like saving a whole human lifetime every day. These things may not affect any one person very much, but the aggregate effects on the whole society are significant.
Utopian Enplaning and Deplaning
In my notion of Utopia, people don’t even bother queueing at a gate for boarding. Instead, groups of passengers identify themselves, either by having their mobile device broadcast that they have a ticket, or by simply holding a ticket out where it’s visible. Airline agents then move around the boarding area on a semi-random basis and inform passengers that they may enplane and go to the seat they purchased. Passengers that crowd the agents may be told to sit down and wait their turn, creating an atmosphere where passengers are encouraged not to pressure the agents.
The agents selecting who boards first are trained to do so using simple heuristics:
People who need extra time and attention, such as the elderly or those traveling with kids should be selected early.
People who are marked for priority boarding should be selected early. (Priority boarding tickets are a different color, to make them notable. Priority boarding may be purchased for any seat, to allow better price discrimination.).
People who are waiting patiently near the gate can be prioritized, to allow for the most-eager to board quickly.
People who insist on carrying large bags onboard can be de-prioritized to reduce aisle congestion.
When a passenger group is told that they can board, the agent scans their ticket. This scan is either done with a camera detecting a QR code or by device-to-device communication. A second agent then scans their ticket again when going through the gate to confirm that they’re okay to board. Passengers with mobile devices can enplane without ever touching said device or dealing with a paper ticket.
The passenger boarding bridge is separated into two lanes: one for the front of the plane and one for the back. The bridge extends to a door in the back of the airplane to approximately double the speed at which people board. When a passenger’s ticket is scanned at the gate, the agent directs them to either board at the front or back of the plane.
Because traveler groups are told to board at the same time, nobody is separated. Because patience is rewarded, everyone gets to sit and rest for a maximal amount of time. Because the airline agents are responsible for telling people they can board, they can control the rate at which people go to the plane. Because the algorithm is highly random, there’s no complicated queue order to manage, and it’s fine if someone shows up to the gate late.
After the obvious ticket-holders have been cleared to enplane, there’s a last-call for any stragglers that may have forgotten to get their tickets out, set their devices in the right mode, or be noticed by the agents. The stragglers can then simply get scanned and board as they would in the good ol’ days.
Because the agents at the gate scan the passengers and know their order, the plane itself can track who is who. Small arrow-shaped lights set into the floor indicate when to keep moving and when to turn. (These same lights are used in the case of an emergency to direct passengers towards exits.) Small screens above each seat read out a name/identifier for each passenger group. Thus, when getting on the plane, one need not even check one’s ticket – the plane will indicate one’s seat.
When deplaning, things happen in a kind of reverse. Instead of a free-for-all, everyone is instructed to stay seated (or at least out of the aisle) until selected by the lights around their seat to disembark. The deplaning algorithm is less random than the enplaning one, and a particular order is selected on a case-by-case basis to give appropriate time for groups, families, people with disabilities, and those who have paid for the privilege of disembarking first (or last), leaving through either the front or the back, depending on which they’re closest to. Those who defy the procedure are identified by sensors in the plane, and fined.
Finally, and most importantly, carry-on bags in Utopia are discouraged. Checked bags are the default option, often being priced into the ticket, with carry-on bags (needing space in an overhead compartment) being noticeably more expensive. Medications, snacks, et cetera can be carried in a personal item and kept beneath the seat. This reduction in carry-ons is one of the biggest speed-ups available.
Due to increased quantities of checked bags, and an effort to reduce hassle, there are checked-bag drop-offs at each gate, as well as at help-desks around the airport. Locks can be put on luggage for extra security, and it’s a priority of airlines to respect traveler’s privacy. Furthermore, bags are unloaded into two-sided lockers that can only be unlocked by the ticket-holder, rather than the free-for-all chaos that is the baggage carousel. Airlines are responsible for lost bags, and there are multiple customer-protection groups that can advocate for travelers who are mistreated or have their bags lost or damaged.
A Final Complaint
Air safety videos suck. The first few times I was on an airplane – when I was a young child – perhaps they were informative. But since then they have offered me little besides being a noisy distraction. Even if there’s new information I should know, it’s one of the worst places to put that info, since I’ve grown accustomed to tuning it out over the years.
What would be far more sensible, I think, is to require at least one traveler per group to have an air travel license. Getting said license would be a simple thing, requiring answering a basic quiz about how to behave in an emergency on an airplane. If the laws change significantly, all license holders could take a quick update-quiz online to learn the new info.
And while we’re at it, can we have seats designated as okay-with-talking vs. do-not-disturb? Discounts could be given to those who don’t care. But some of us have… preferences around what sort of person we sit next to for several hours.