"now boarding seats A and F."
"now boarding seats B and E"...
Seems simple enough. Priority seating would just be a box that you check off, only available to people travelling in groups. Seat these people as far back and as close to a wall as possible.
I think we have the next round of tests though. See how many people you need to randomly swap before Steffen is worse than back-to-front.
Print triangles for window seats, squares for middle seats, circles for aisle seats.
Print arrow up for modulo 4 numbered seats, arrow right for non-modulo 4 even numbered seats, arrow down for modulo 3 numbered seats, and arrow left for non-modulo 3 odd numbered seats.
Everyone gets two and only two easily identified symbols in addiion to their ticket number, which suffice for all of the methods outlined in the article.
Let's conduct a thought experiment. My grandma (that has difficulty hearing) is boarding a plane. Try explaining to her, in a sensible and efficient manner that only the people at the windows should get in first.
Ok, maybe my grandma is an extreme example. But think of a first time flyer. Lots of people would be confused.
Also, as already stated, people that travel together sit side by side. Are you going to split the young couple of newly weds during boarding? Is that really sensible? Or the mother and her five kids?
The main takeaway that I get is that you should let people get in without any pre-ordering. Unless you can devise a socially acceptable way to enforce outside-in boarding, that is. I'm not.
You see, the bottom line for me is that simulations are really valuable, but not taking into account the human factors involving the business, how the people actually consume your product, you can have great ideas that work on excel and flunk marvelously on the market.