The physicist assumed the passengers were all spherical.
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This reminds me of the stupid in LA where you are getting off the freeway and the right lane of the Off ramp is jammed well onto the freeway yet if you drive in the left hand lane you can go all the way to the front and still make a legal right turn. All the idiots line up because they think the long line is the one to be in because itās the long line.
But doesnāt airline boarding make a good analogy for broadband traffic? Or is that totally off-topic?
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I agree. This is how you do it people. The plane is not leaving without you.
Re competition for space: this is not really an issue. I donāt remember ever being on a flight where there was a shortage of space for carry-on. You may not be able to get it in the overhead above you but who cares if itās a few seats back? Thereās always room somewhere because everyone has a maximum carry-on allowance and the planes are designed to fit x number of people with the relevant space for the carry-on of x number of people.
I call bullshit. The mythbusters also trialled this question and found that loading people from the back of the plane increased efficiency significantly.
The cost of an economy ticket is usually less than the cost of that travellerās share of the jet fuel. First and Business class tickets subsidise the price of economy tickets, so I donāt really care if they board first: making the wealthy subsidise my ticket and wait for me sounds like the good end of the deal. Iām going to be so drunk shortly thereafter that I could be sitting on a seat made of upholstery tacks and not even know it anyway.
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and coalesced on impact, I assume?
I take from the article that service providers know the best way to serve their clientele. But they use this knowledge to create chaos in order to create classes of convenience so that the moneyed classes can pay more in order to avoid contrived inefficiencies .
This sounds plausible.
But in a true free-market those who engage in such shenanigans would have to face competitors who donāt
Only government can create monopolies.
Generally if you sit on a flight cradling your warm nuts, youāll get kicked off.
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Why didnāt you just tell us to google it?
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This too could be an interesting Mythbusters, with important ramifications for the airline industry 
In reality the airlines would push to put us in tubes under some sort of induced-coma-type-dealy. Think of the oxygen savings!
Your assumption would be sort-of correct. Iāve flown on several domestic US flights, but theyāve usually been part of an international journey the involves stopovers so my big bag is already checked luggage and my carry-on is the size itās supposed to be.
Iāve seen them checking peopleās carry-on in that fashion as well and it is pretty hilarious.
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l sit patiently until everyone else has boarded and they announce theyāre closing the doors in five minutes. Then I walk calmly to my seat, put my carryon underneath the seat in front of me and I enjoy my flight. Like @teapot said, alcohol helps.
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There seems to be no clear consensus here. Southwest may have no assigned seats. But Easyjet (cheap European carrier), masters of doing things quickly, have recently started using assigned seats. They get to charge a little extra for ābetterā seats, but Iām sure the main reason is to reduce boarding times. And it works, because the smart folks (as seen in the comments above) wait for the main bustle to pass and board when there is space. It takes the heat out of the boarding scrum.
Boarding a plane quickly is a complicated problem. Everyone who has ever flown has sat there thinking āthere must be a better wayā. Itās nice to see someone actually try to model it. I would be interesting to know what the airlines are trying.
Every domestic flight Iāve been on in the past three or four years has run out of overhead cargo space. Every single one. About 3/4 of the way through boarding, theyāll start making announcements that thereās no more space for carry-on luggage and will start taking volunteers to have their carryon bags checked for free.
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This strikes me as a āborn on third base and think you hit a homerā kind of statement. People in first class arenāt āadeptā at anything except having more money than other people. They donāt have to deal with the hassles of boarding because the airlines do everything they can to pamper them and help them avoid interacting with hoi poloi.
Even more baffling is the people in the window seats who immediately stand, but donāt have enough headroom. They stand there, bent-over under the overhead bins, sort of leaning/hanging on the seat-back in front of them, and going nowhere. Looks terribly uncomfortable. I just canāt fathom it, especially as one major reason they are uncomfortable standing is presence of a an empty and comfortable seat, which is jutting into their knees. Why donāt they just sit down?
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I sometimes do this, simply because Iāve been sitting immobile for about 5 hours straight, and even standing hunched-over uncomfortably is temporarily preferable to one more minute sitting on my tuckus.
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Somebody buy this writer a thesaurus. Twelve uses of āstupidā aināt smart.
Families are shown boarding first and clearing the aisles before everyone else. I assume something like a school group would be given a block near each other filling entire rows and could presumably go last. Given the number of times in my life I have seen the latter on a plane, it seems not something to worry about much.
