The mythbusters segment alluded to in the article is quite interesting to watch. I think they did a quite good attempt at creating a real-life scenario for boa

The mythbusters segment alluded to in the article is quite interesting to watch. I think they did a quite good attempt at creating a real-life scenario for boarding a plane. While the article suggests that part of the issue is that the airlines create inefficiency in order to be able to offer perks to get around the inefficiency. That's probably a minor consideration (I can easily see the 'rewards program' suit arguing in a meeting to keep it). But I think there would be a lot of inertia in changing a program like boarding allocations. There are a lot of procedures around boarding - we don't know exactly what 'hooks' the airlines have around their procedures. We also don't know how more complicated systems test with the general public - including first time flyers, people who don't speak the same language as the airline, and other edge cases. The current methods are quite resilient against these problem-cases, and the more-efficient ones may collapse faster as a result. Essentially I think that it's easy for outsiders to suggest changes - but we should reflect on that like user requests like 'why don't they just change the UI on this software to make it more like facebook?'. It would be good to get an airline insiders knowledge and comments.