Eitan Bachmat and his colleagues at Ben-Gurion University in Israel set up a computer model of their own version of space-time to model the departure hall drudgery. Instead of the usual three space dimensions and one time dimension their departure lounge universe has just two - passengers' row numbers and their places in the boarding queue when it first forms. Each passenger is a point in space-time. They only dealt with the scenario of passengers with assigned seats, not the budget airline "survival of the fittest" approach.
Currently Northwest Airlines uses the free for all method where passengers queue up in whatever order they want. Other carriers use the system that boards from the windows to the aisles, in an attempt to keep the aisles as open as possible. Bachmat's research shows that boarding from the back isn't always the best option either.
They found that boarding from the back was no better than letting passengers queue at random. The problem is that while the fat lady in seat 80a is hunting for her travel pillow, she is stopping everyone else in the row sitting down. They are all waiting in the aisle and so blocking rows 79 and 78 as well, and the passengers from those rows are blocking 77 and 76 and so on.
Continue Reading the rest of the details online at Guardian Unlimited Science
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