How to turn around

But not in Minneapolis, apparently.

What's better than a big solution to a thorny problem? A simple solution.

One of my favorite examples came from Delta Air Lines a few years ago: a simple trick they use to turn planes around faster, which means passengers get where they're going on time, more often.

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

It saves a minute or two every time a jet rolls away from the gate. Multiply that by 1,000 Delta flights a day at big airports like Atlanta, and you start saving lots and lots of time.

The best part is that it wasn't a bunch of high-priced consultants or MBAs who came up with the idea.

Instead, it was a group of front line Delta employees: customer service agents at the Atlanta airport came up with the idea, a Delta spokesperson told me.

The problem they solved starts with the design of your average airport terminal. Think of a plane lined up outside, perpendicular to the gates, its nose facing the glass.

To get to the runway, a tug has to push the plane back away from the gate, then turn it 90 degrees so that it's lined up with the taxiway. Then, the pilots fire up the engines, and the plane slowly taxis away.

But it turns out there's an easier solution. And I like to imagine Delta's customer service agents and ground support equipment people, watching this routine a thousand times a day, and then suddenly realizing:

"Wait. What if we push the planes out at a 45 degree angle?"

Zing! Yes, it's actually that simple.

It was a relatively easy change to make to the airline departure process, Delta's Michael R. Thomas told me, but it has some really far-reaching effects.

1. First, it takes less time to push a plane straight back at a 45-degree angle than it does to back out straight, stop, turn, and then push it again.

2. Second, the 45-degree angle means planes can start their engines earlier, instead of waiting until they're through the 90-degree turn.

3. Third, when planes turn at 90 degrees, they block airplanes at the one or two gates behind them. Pushing back at 45 degrees means they don't block each other, so more tugs can push more planes at the same time.

"So now you're also shaving time off the adjacent gate, too. With so much traffic across Atlanta, these incremental little time savings have a big impact," Thomas said. "It's kind of a quirky thing, and I think it's pretty neat."

I caught this originally as a minor point in an ABC News clip about cutting turnaround time.

So, I wrote about it a few years ago. Then, it happened to come up in conversation several times while I was at the Inc. 5000 Conference last week.

Then, my flight home just happened to be on Delta -- first time I can remember in a long time.

I'm pretty sure we backed away from the gate at a-45 degree angle on the first leg of my return home out of Palm Springs, but not on the second leg which was out of Minneapolis. I was a bit disappointed.

Lo and behold, when I went back and looked at my original interview, Delta had told me there are some quirks to the technique that have something to do with the odd layout of the taxiways.

Honestly, I know nothing about moving airplanes around. But I do know that sometimes the best way to improve something is to listen to the people who watch it up close every day.

I think we call them "experts."

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7 other things …

• A federal judge on Tuesday ordered former Donald Trump attorney and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to turn over all his valuable possessions and his Manhattan penthouse apartment to the control of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers he defamed and to whom he now owes $150 million. (CNN)

• Hundreds gathered Monday to mourn Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez, an activist for Indigenous peoples and farm laborers who was killed in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, where drug cartels have caused thousands of people to flee their homes. The state prosecutors' office said Rev. Pérez was shot dead by two gunmen just after he had finished celebrating Mass. (CBS News)

• Kamala Harris has received contributions from 4.9 million donors since entering the presidential race on July 21, more than three times as many as her Donald Trump’s 1.37 million in the same period. Trump, who rose to political power fueled by grassroots contributors in 2016, is now relying on wealthy backers, including billionaires Elon Musk and Miriam Adelson, to underwrite his third White House bid. (Financial Times, Bloomberg)

• It will take more income to reach higher tax brackets after a roughly 2.8% inflation adjustment for 2025, the Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday. The highest income-tax, 37%, rate will apply to income above $751,600. For individuals, that top tax bracket will start at $626,350. (WSJ)

• Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries and two others were arrested Tuesday as part of a criminal sex trafficking investigation. They stand accused of operating an international sex trafficking and prostitution business that recruited young men for parties in the U.S. and abroad, according to a 16-count indictment. (ABC News)

• Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul whose alleged sexual misconduct fueled the #MeToo movement and who was recently indicted on new charges, has chronic myeloid leukemia. The sources added that Weinstein is undergoing treatment in prison at Rikers Island in New York. (NBC News)

• A woman who tried to retrieve her lost phone from between boulders in Australia’s Hunter Valley became stuck upside down for seven hours before she was rescued earlier this month. Just the bare soles of the woman’s feet can be seen in photos of the incident posted on social media Monday by the New South Wales (NSW) Ambulance service. (Yahoo News)

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Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!