I try to avoid flying Southwest Airlines because of its open seating policy. Open seating brought out some weird behaviors: setting an alarm to immediately check-in a second after online check-in is open, calculating in your mind if it’s worth sitting in the middle seat to risk no one sitting next to you, judging fellow passengers that have boarded before you as you decide where to sit…

Thankfully, there’s news that it might go away.

Nonetheless, this CGP Grey video shows how finding an effective boarding procedure is a surprisingly complex problem. Also, it’s interesting that the “common-sense” system of boarding back-to-front is actually slower than boarding in a random order(!).

More interestingly, the theoretically best solution is not feasible because of social implications.

Maybe airlines have an incentive to make boarding as painful as possible as it gives them opportunity to sell boarding related perks like priority boarding or even seat selection…