Airline Boarding is Hilariously Broken
And why nobody's going to fix it
Boarding an airplane is the only time 180 adults collectively agree to perform a ritual that’s objectively worse than it needs to be, and then we all pretend this is just how things are.
You know the ritual. It begins with a gate agent announcing that boarding will start with groups named after rare gemstones and precious metals, i.e., sapphire, diamond, gold, silver. This group strolls to the gate like members of they have been given ownership stake in the airline.
Then comes active military. Followed by “passengers needing extra time.” Then families with small children (who somehow weren’t “passengers needing extra time”).
When the gate agent finally announces “We’ll now begin boarding Group 1,” 47 people immediately stand up, clutching their boarding passes like golden tickets, even though they’re in Group 7. They form a scrum around the gate, blocking everyone who’s actually supposed to board (right now, it’s Group 1), creating a human traffic jam before anyone’s even on the plane. But this is only foreshadowing what’s about to come.
Then comes Group 2. Then Group 3. Then Group 4. Then people with the airline’s credit card. Then Group 5, which is somehow different from “main cabin.” Then steerage. At some point you realize there are more boarding groups than there are rows on the plane.
The beautiful part? None of it matters. Because while this elaborate kabuki theater unfolds, everyone’s playing a completely different game: the Overhead Bin Hunger Games.
The System That Makes No Sense
Here’s what actually happens when you board a plane front-to-back, which is how we currently do it:
Person 12A gets on, walks to row 12, stops, and spends 90 seconds trying to fit their “carry-on” (a steamer trunk) into the overhead bin. Behind them, 150 people stand in the aisle, motionless, like a human parking lot. Person 12A finally sits down. Person 13B now does the exact same thing. Repeat 30 times.
Meanwhile, Person 34F has been standing in the aisle for 15 minutes, watching this happen, knowing their turn is coming, unable to do anything about it. It’s like waiting in line at the DMV, except you’re standing up and you paid $400 for the privilege.
The current system—boarding front-to-back by arbitrary “groups”—is mathematically optimized to create the maximum number of aisle-blocking events. It’s like designing a highway where every car has to stop and parallel park before the next car can pass. You couldn’t create a worse system if you tried.
Actually, that’s not true. You could create a worse system: you could have people board randomly while calling out numbers that don’t correspond to their seats and then act surprised when they don’t listen. Which is exactly what we do.
Here’s What Would Actually Work
The solution is so obvious it’s painful. Board rear-to-front. Window seats first, then middle, then aisle. Or just strict rear-to-front by row.
Think about it: If you board row 30 before row 10, Person 30A can take as long as they want with their overhead bin because no one is behind them. Person 29A boards next, same deal. By the time you get to the front of the plane, everyone’s seated and you’re done.
This isn’t theoretical. Astrophysicist Jason Steffen literally ran computer simulations and found that back-to-front, window-middle-aisle boarding is twice as fast as the current system. Twice as fast. We’ve known this for over a decade.
Or here’s an even simpler solution: Make first class board last. Right now, first class boards first, which means they sit there sipping champagne while 200 people shuffle past them giving them death stares. Cool for them, I guess, but it also means they’re taking up the aisle space while everyone else is trying to get to their seats. Board them last and they can walk directly to their seats with no one in their way. Everyone wins.
Want to get really radical? Ban carry-ons. Or actually enforce the size limits. The overhead bin arms race exists because airlines started charging for checked bags, so everyone brings everything on board. You know what doesn’t have a boarding problem? Trains. Stadiums. Movie theaters. Buses. Literally any other system where people need to sit down in assigned seats.
The fix is absurdly simple. We’re not trying to solve cold fusion here. We’re trying to get people to sit down in numbered chairs.
Why Nothing Will Change
So why don’t airlines do any of this?
Because they don’t give a shit about you.
I don’t mean that as hyperbole. I mean it as a literal description of their incentive structure. Inefficient boarding doesn’t cost airlines money. It costs you time. And your time is worth nothing to them.
Think about what airlines actually care about: fuel costs, labor costs, gate fees, turnaround time between flights. You know what doesn’t affect turnaround time? Whether boarding takes 20 minutes or 35 minutes, because the plane isn’t leaving until it’s scheduled to leave anyway. The pilots need their pre-flight checks. The fuel needs to be loaded. The catering needs to happen. Boarding is rarely — if ever— the bottleneck.
But here’s what inefficient boarding does create: anxiety. Stress. A desperate scramble for overhead bin space. And you know what anxious, stressed people do? They pay $40 for “early boarding” so they can get on the plane first and guarantee their bin space.
The chaos isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It’s a revenue stream.
Airlines figured out decades ago that customer experience doesn’t matter. You’re going to fly anyway because you need to get somewhere and they’ve consolidated into an oligopoly. There are four major carriers. They don’t compete on service because they don’t have to. They compete on routes and prices, and even then, barely.
The system is broken on purpose. It’s broken because fixing it would cost money (retraining gate agents, redesigning boarding procedures, enforcing carry-on limits) and generate zero additional revenue. Meanwhile, keeping it broken generates upgrade fees, credit card sign-ups for priority boarding, and gate-checked bag fees when the bins inevitably fill up.
You think I’m being cynical? Airlines haven’t cared about customer experience since deregulation in 1978. They’ve spent 40 years figuring out how to extract maximum revenue from minimum service. They’ve removed legroom, added fees for everything, turned their planes into flying buses, and made the entire experience as miserable as legally possible.
And boarding? Boarding is just another opportunity to make you pay to avoid suffering they created.
So no, they’re not going to fix it. They’re never going to fix it. Because the system isn’t broken for them.
It’s only broken for you.