Take it from somebody who flies a lot:

Theorycrafting about the best way to load/unload a plane is pointless.

Bring water in a resealable bottle on your plane. Bring some headphones and make sure they are charged. Make sure if halfway through the flight you even feel a little like you need to pee, do it in flight.

When the plane lands keep your headphones popped in, and chill out until you're off the plane.

No, you wouldn't. You're not special. Chill.

I just want to point out that you shouldn't forget those behind you. As soon as you can fan out and get out of the way of the people behind you, the faster those people move, and the faster the people behind them reach the door.

A huge part of this problem is that when people get to the bottle neck that's slowing everyone down and making everyone go single file, people take their time getting through it. That's exactly when you need to hurry up and get the fuck out of the way.

It only takes a couple of people to waddle slowly off the plane to set everyone else up to wait several minutes before they can reach the front. And the problem is compounding.

So, what I'm saying here is, stay the fuck out of the way when you're not engaging in the activity of walking off the plane. If you're packing shit up, pulling out your luggage, putting on a sweater or backpack, stand in an isle and let everyone past while you fumble around. When you get off the plane don't stop and stretch and stare at the lights or whatever, move to the side or keep moving at a brisk pace away from the door until you get into a clearing where people can easily move around you.

None of this will make deplaneing fast, but the focus is on not making any slower than it has to be.

Obligatory X... I mean CGP Grey

In totally unrelated matter, I now really despise ppl who put their personal item on the overhead bin and then take like 1 min to take them off even though it could fit under their seat

There's an effect I see in situations like this where the people in a big hurried rush end up being slow asses because apparently they don't care about this working efficiently, they just care about when they can stop waiting.

On a plane these are the people who leap out of their seat and block your row, only to start searching for their bag once it's their turn to get off the plane.

I see the same from drivers at red lights. If there are multiple lanes waiting to go, and one car has to inch forward every 5 seconds even though they are already way past the line, then in my very limited anecdotal experience there's like a 90% chance when the light turns green they just sit there for a few seconds after I start going.

I want the safety announcement at the start of the flight to say:

"You are in a flying metal coffin. Now imagine this coffin filling with smoke and fire. This plane only passes safety regulations because we simulated unboarding it with everyone behaving perfectly, leaving all of their crap behind. In an emergency, you MUST leave your stuff behind. Your life depends on it. The lives of everyone around you depend on it. If you see someone trying to take stuff with them, you MUST use whatever level of force is necessary to stop them. Even lethal force is justified. You must be prepared to tear someone to pieces if they don't leave their stuff behind. The lives of you and your family depend on the asshole in front of you letting their laptop burn."

That's the kind of boarding announcement I want to hear!

They really need to load back to front, then unload front to back, if it was organized it would go so much better. Like announce when each group can stand and get bags and when each can leave.

Me and my 300 clones spider-crawling over the seats to deplane.

And me. I'd just wait the 30 seconds for all of yous to deboard and then take my sweet time.

If they managed where luggage was stored in the overhead, they could reduce it 10 fold. The whole wait is because people need to go back x rows past people standing to get their luggage. Even if they made everyone sit and deboard in zones it could be way faster.

No joke. I hate waiting for people who are inefficient and slow getting off a plane. If everyone just waited a few seconds to stand up, me and my one piece of carry-on could walk straight to the door without delay. I hate this aspect of flying more than almost any other. A late landing making me miss a connecting flight is still the worst, however.

To all the people telling OP they're wrong, you don't fly enough. The issue isn't evenly distributed. It's not like cars in traffic or whatever.

Airlines put the expensive seats in the front. The people who can afford them are usually much older, either traveling retirees or very late career white collar workers who have significant status. They're the first ones holding up everyone because they take forever to find all the assorted shit (personal item, oversized roller bag, neck pillow, laptop, ipad, lost earbud, etc) they've stuck all over the place, which the gate agent/FAs wouldn't admonish them for because of their aforementioned status. But they're first class, so the peasants behind them can wait in the bread line.

After they get off (on watching you glare), depending on airline, it's the fraction of people who are old and not rich, or don't fly often and aren't used to all the ritual. They'll have placed their bag in an overhead that's 12 rows behind them and demand everyone stop and crowd surf it up or else they'll just sit there blocking the line.

After them come the young vacation families, you know, the ones who had the screaming baby for the last 6 hours. They couldn't be bothered to pay for seat selection to save money so one parent is with one kid three rows ahead but needs to coral the kids behind them because the other parent was playing on a Nintendo switch for the whole flight and didn't try to organize all the kids toys, now lost to entropy, and so the marital spat and bawling (louder now) children begin.

Then there's you. You fly a lot so you have nothing more than two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush, all safely hidden from the TSA in your prison wallet and ready to go without so much as a nanosecond of notice, along with your phone and airpods to combat the screaming child in front of you. You got 31B, way in the back, after trying to game united's seat assignment system by checking in only after all but the exit row seats were taken, but someone missed their flight and here you are.

Generally the legacy airlines will have the most old people, but the vast majority of people on them are very used to flying, because they know better than to book a budget airline. It'll be slow yet ordered.

The budget airlines like united and frontier will be the opposite, lots of young spry 20 somethings, but lots of vacation families that couldn't afford Delta... I won't sugar coat it, it's gonna be a shit storm. The FAs have been contractually required to keep everyone at the very edge of their sanity through the enforcement of a variety of draconian company policies (like turning on all the lights half way through a redeye to scream about some credit card offer), so things are primed for chaos. Lots of shoving and yelling. Everyone's reviewing the Wikipedia "list of crimes of passion" to see if this qualifies.

Then there's spirit. Half the people on the flight will be coming down off of something they got on the dark web by the time you arrive at the gate. You've already seen at least a liter of blood spilled from various fist fights. Everyone was already up and crushing each other in the aisle long before the captain even briefed the approach. The FAs have locked themselves in the lavs by now and the captain (an FFDO) has barricaded the flight deck with charts and duct tape and is aiming his questionably modded P320 at he door. Welcome to the new season of Hunger Games - Spam Can. You're on your own, good luck and good hunting.

Most off that time is standing still, while the L1 door is still closed, and the jetway has not even begun to move to connect to the aircraft.

People don't realise that once the plane is parked, engines are shut down and belt signs go off, there's still shit to do before deplaning can begin.

During covid it was so good. They actually called the lines which can leave the plane so we all left in an orderly fashion.