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By Sally French | NerdWallet Airlines devote a lot of energy and strategy to how passengers board an aircraft. Passengers are separated into different groups — like preboarding, priority boarding, family boarding, zones 1-7, A 1-60 and so on — and embark accordingly. Some airlines have up to 10 different boarding groups.

You’d think airlines would make the exit process more structured, too, but in reality, neither experts nor passengers can agree on the right way to do it. Imagine this: Upon arrival, passengers in the middle of the plane are slow to stand up to signal a start to disembarking. In response, a plucky flyer from a row farther back whizzes up to the front to take their turn in the queue of exiters, thereby “cutting” the line.



Is this bad or selfish behavior? Etiquette experts think so. “It’s common courtesy to allow others to go ahead of you,” etiquette expert Jo Hayes explained in an email. “Be patient, and allow them time to get into the aisle and grab their bag from overhead.

” But just because many people consider it polite to let the people in the prior rows offboard first, is it the most efficient? Turns out, it might not be. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Air Transport Management from researchers at Northwestern University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences sought to find the optimal deplaning strategy by simulating the exit process on three types of commercial airliners and using three different al.

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