Southwest is trying to streamline its boarding process

Jimmy John’s isn’t the only company trying to be known as freaky fast. Southwest Airlines has turned four gates at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport into “innovation zones,” and is currently running a series of experiments that aim to shave five minutes off the time its planes spend at the gate between flights. Which may not seem like much, but when you’re operating 4,000+ flights/day the minutes start to add up fast.

And boarding procedures are the most logical place to try and shave time. Research shows boarding bottlenecks are the biggest detriment to turnaround times, Massoud Bazargan, a professor in the college of business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told the WSJ. Plus Southwest, which ranked #6 out of nine domestic airlines in on-time arrivals last year, definitely has some room for improvement.

Some experiments the airline is running:

• Adding passenger self-serve kiosks at the gate to try and shorten the line to speak to an agent.
• A group chat between workers at the gate, on the plane, and on the ground to quickly get a handle on things like gate-checked bags.
• Playing music on the jet bridge (because the team’s research found people move faster to up-tempo music). Southwest currently has four soundtracks: disco, EDM, hip-hop and kids’ music.

⏱✈️ Looking ahead… Not every test will be rolled out to Southwest’s 121 airports, but many do end up leading to permanent changes. For instance, the airline’s experiments with unassigned seating more than a decade ago led to its current (and somewhat unique) boarding procedures.