I listened to a radio interview many years ago with a physicist who had done simulations to find the optimal boarding strategy. Once he explained it it was tota

I listened to a radio interview many years ago with a physicist who had done simulations to find the optimal boarding strategy. Once he explained it it was totally obvious. The biggest time waster is waiting for people in front of you to finish putting up their luggage so that they step out of the ail and you can get to your seat. The boarding strategy most airlines employ of boarding people at the same time who sit in the same part of the plane minimizes opportunities for passengers to put their luggage away in parallel. So it's actually a actively negative boarding strategy. Boarding in random order would be better. Ideally you would space people out from different sections if the airplane and within reach group someone from the back of the plane would board first. They'd all arrive at their seats in parallel and start putting their luggage up at the same time and then the next group repeats the procedure. I think what Southwest does is interesting because it leaves the process in essence to the passengers. I've seen it go both ways where someone takes the first free seat and starts putting up their luggage, blocking everyone else from making progress. Sometimes people are great and walk by available seats top the middle and now people can start putting their stuff away in parallel. Ever since I listened to that I cannot stop thinking about it when boarding is slow and get upset about the airline making things actively inefficient. A friend made the good point though that a likely reason for the process being chosen despite actively wasting time is that it feels intuitively efficient to most passengers and keeps them happy.