In The News: Department of Physics and Astronomy
Jason Steffen has spent his career trying to crack the deepest mysteries of the Earth. He's an astrophysicist who studies exoplanets orbiting distant stars, dark matter and gravitation. In his spare time he also tackles another impenetrable riddle of the galaxy.
One of America’s largest airlines is changing its boarding process to make it faster. It could be even faster.
Other researchers who collaborated on the research include: Jason F. Rowe at Bishops University in Canada, Eric Ford at Penn State, Daniel C. Fabrycky at the University of Chicago, Darin Ragozzine at Brigham Young University and Jason H. Steffen at the University of Nevada Las Vegas
United Airlines is re-introducing its WILMA window-to-aisle boarding process, which the airline says saves an average of two minutes per flight. This is not an insignificant savings. Ground time costs airlines an estimated $100 a minute. A $200 savings per flight, multiplied over the 4,900 daily flights the airline operates, means nearly $1 million in daily savings.
United Airlines will start boarding passengers in economy class with window seats first starting next week, a move designed to reduce the time planes spend sitting on the ground.
United Airlines will start boarding passengers in economy class with window seats first starting next week, a move designed to reduce the time planes spend sitting on the ground.
The United system, known as Wilma, boards passengers in order of window, middle and aisle seats. But it may not relieve all the bottlenecks, industry professionals argue.
The airline said in an internal memo that it will implement the plan on Oct. 26. The plan – called WILMA, for window, middle and aisle -- was tested at several locations and deemed to shave up to two minutes off boarding time. Variations of the WILMA approach have existed for many years.
More than 500 free-floating planetary-mass objects have been discovered wandering through the Orion Nebula thanks to new observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Most bizarrely, about 40 of these newfound objects in the nebula’s Trapezium Cluster exist in wide binary pairs, confounding expectations about how these so-called “rogue planets” form.
From Winnemucca to Las Vegas, Nevadans are in a position to see the eclipse better than almost anywhere else
Shouldn’t we be boarding airplanes back to front? That seems to be a common refrain across the internet and in airports as people struggle to make sense of airlines’ increasingly byzantine boarding processes.
You are familiar with that friendly boarding announcement from the gate agent. Unfortunately, it means the next 45 minutes of your life will be messy. And airlines have made it chaotic by design — so people will pay to get an easier boarding process.