Airlines Look to Catholic Churches For Tips on How to Expedite Boarding and Deplaning

John Alicosta, CEO of the world’s largest airline, Global Airlines, has long been looking for ways to expedite the boarding and deplaning processes on his airline’s flights. As anyone who’s travelled over the last twenty years knows, both are incredibly long, complicated, and grueling processes involving massive crowds of people bunched up into each other trying to squeeze in and out of airliners’ narrow aisles.

Not only do passengers hate the wasted time and cattle-car-like conditions of lining up, pushing, and shoving, but the long duration of time needed for everyone to board a plane and to get off hurts airlines’ bottom line as well. Planes that spend more time on the ground due to such delays can’t be scheduled for as many flights per day, and make far less money. Alicosta, seeking new ways to address this issue, has turned to a surprising source: Catholic Churches.

Everyone knows that Catholics are good at running out of Mass early, jumping into their already reverse-parked cars, and speeding home 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.

Alicosta’s Brand Experience Team and Operations Efficiency Analysis Team are consulting with the priests and parish councils of some of the most efficiently emptying Catholic Churches in hopes that they can apply some of these skills to their own business.

“So far, according to our research, it appears that Catholics begin to plan their exit when Mass is only half-done, and put on their coats, purses, etc., about ten minutes before Mass is over,” Alicosta reported in an investor call today. “I think we can get half of that benefit of that Catholic habit if our passengers begin doing this during our flights and maybe even start lining up in the aisle near the door before landing. All we would need to do is persuade our passengers that they’re only here out of obligation. It seems that Catholics leave early almost as an act of rebellion against whatever they’re obligated to do. So the harder we tell our passengers to sit down and never leave, perhaps the more they’ll rebel and be better at leaving quickly.”

“Perhaps, to match the fact that Catholics often leave directly after Holy Communion, we could get our passengers to leave by parachute and thereby eliminate deplaning time completely,” added Global Airlines’ chief operating officer, Alister McGraw. “We definitely at least want them to be gathering their belongings up quite a bit before the end of each flight. Maybe an annoying set of announcements once the plane is at the gate, like the ten-minute-long set of Church announcements after Holy Communion, would be a good incentive for people to hurry a bit faster out of the plane.”

FAA regulations may pose problems for the implementation of these initiatives, as most of them would seem to pose dangers to passengers, even if they would help Global Airlines become more efficient.

But even though Global Airlines’ study initially only aimed at learning from Catholic skills at quick exits, the Global team came up with several other fascinating efficiency and revenue generation ideas from their study.

“We love how Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion save so much work for the priests,” added Alicosta. “We’re pondering creating ‘Extraordinary Ministers of Piloting’ or ‘Extraordinary Flight Attendants’ that could replace the pilots and flight attendants. Perhaps we’ll even add a collection plate and a second collection. Maybe if we play some nice songs in the background during the flight, like “Gather Us In” and “Shine Jesus Shine,” they’ll be happier customers and more willing to pay, err donate more to our great corporation.”

Alicosta’s competitors have planned to talk to traditionalist Catholic parishes in hopes that with “tradition” would come even better “efficiency,” but Alicosta laughs at these plans. “Don’t they know that TLM parishes have people sticking around, kneeling in prayer for half an hour after Mass, and then for hours talking outside the Church afterwards. I hope they do copy their habits, though, as it will make my company so much more efficient by comparison.”