You’ve seen the articles over and over, as almost every airline invents a new boarding scheme every year or two and proclaims it to be the ultimate solution to easy boarding and fast turnaround.
Turns out there are really two main reasons why they are always wrong. One is the obvious: Any time you give someone priority over someone else, someone squeals—and if the squealer is the airline’s most loyal and profitable elites, the scheme is always adjusted in their favor, and efficiency is tossed under the bus.
The other main reason is not so obvious. It’s overthinking and overtinkering and to a big extent overassuming.
According to a report published in the journal of the American Physical Society last month, authored by scientists in Israel, Norway and Latvia, the key has never been front-to-back or back-to-front, or window-before-aisle or any of those schemes.
What they discovered by analyzing data from boardings and gates all over is that the key is getting the slowest passengers loaded first, and then the fastest. Pre-boarding of families with small children and people with disabilities first actually speeds the overall process; putting the able without carryons last is the other piece of that puzzle. Apparently, the fast people will rush to catch up.
The team’s analysis used a mathematical model that was first devised to describe Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Eitan Bachmat, the prime author, told reporters that “You can either model the universe — that’s what this other dude did — or you can model airplane boarding, and that’s pretty much it.”
