Attention Everyone in Groups A, B and C, and Rows 42 Through 1: Get on the Plane! Now!
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 12.14.05 | 12:38 PM ET
A mad boarding scramble by passengers may be a more efficient way to seat an airplane than having them load into the back rows first, according to a team of scientists and mathmeticians at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. Eitan Bachmat and his colleagues arrived at their conclusion using concepts more commonly applied to the theory of relativity and prime number theory, writes Philip Ball in Nature.
“The mathematics of permutations gets pretty hairy, involving concepts such as ‘two-dimensional Lorentz geometry’ and ‘random matrix theory’ that are likely to boggle airline companies,” Ball writes. I don’t think airline companies are the only people those ideas boggle. Nevertheless, the conclusion is clear. Ball writes: “Boarding from the back rows first - typical in classier airlines - is much less efficient. As experience tells us, boarders are frequently held up while those ahead of them block the aisles.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
