Clearly, there are faster ways to board an airplane.

But if you did make it this far, you probably already knew that efficiency isn’t the only variable in the real world. Boarding groups aren’t designed purely for throughput. There are ticket classes and loyalty programmes, infants and senior citizens, and a myriad of other human factors that dictate priority.

We aren’t neat little yellow dots.

There was a CGP Grey video about this exact topic, which is also mentioned at the bottom as an inspiration. I like this articles conclusion more, because from what I remember, the videos conclusion was more of a complaint, that humans inability and constraints are the problem that prevents a perfect boarding procedure, but this article feels more nuanced to me, in that the ‘perfect’ boarding procedure doesn’t really take into account all of the important factors, and is just pretty math, but not practical for real life.

Very interesting