Boarding a plane in the most efficient manner means nothing if you're going to make exceptions for half the passengers based on their mileage status or whether they paid an extra $40 to get first dibs on the starvation rations of overhead space. Even still, boarding rows 21-40 in one block doesn't mean much when row 21 steps on first and struggles for 5 minutes to get their bag loaded.

Instead, there should be a complete mock-up of the plane at the gate. The super-mega-diamond-platinum- rhodium travellers would get first dibs on THIS space, not the plane, and if your bag doesn't fit in the mock- up, you're required to check your bag. Once the mock- up is "boarded", then everyone gets on the plane in that exact order, back to front, with no question on where they're going to ultimately sit, what the safety video looks like, where their bag goes or whether it fits, etc.

I'd imagine, given the cost of the plane and the economic incentive to keep it in the air, creating this mock-up would be well worth the cost.
-- kevinthenerd, Dec 30 2016

If the plane had a big enough rear door, like a C-130 or an Antonov, you could slide the mock-up, passengers and all, into the plane, and then take off. The fuselage would just be a big empty aluminium tube with a cockpit at one end. Dispense with boarding stairs.

Ooh, added bonus; in the event of an emergency on the tarmac, the passenger bit could be ejected out the back, away from the fuel and engines.
-- pertinax, Dec 30 2016


Well, at that point, you could have more than one of them per plane. For instance, a plane could travel from London to Paris to Rome. The, er, "flight module" full of London to Paris passengers could be removed and replaced with the one full of Paris to Rome passengers, leaving the London to Rome passengers uninterrupted.

If anything, this might save on journey time, because now the Paris to Rome passengers can start to board before the plane has arrived, while the London to Paris passengers can continue to disembark after it has taken off.
-- Wrongfellow, Dec 30 2016


// "flight module" full of London to Paris passengers //

These are presumably deportees, criminals, and the mentally impaired. No-one else is going tonve travelling to paris ...
-- 8th of 7, Dec 30 2016


Then, if nobody wants to fly from Paris to Rome, it can simply be ejected without forcing the plane to land, saving even further on journey time.
-- Wrongfellow, Dec 30 2016



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