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Satire from Fortune

Satire: Scientists Confirm You Are The Only Person Who Knows How to Board a Plane

By
Anne VanderMey
Anne VanderMey
and
Ashwin Rodrigues
Ashwin Rodrigues
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Anne VanderMey
Anne VanderMey
and
Ashwin Rodrigues
Ashwin Rodrigues
Down Arrow Button Icon
February 23, 2018, 12:00 PM ET
Group of people standing in queue at boarding gate
Getty Images

You always knew it was true. Now scientists have proven it.

Since the emergence of commercial aviation, the phenomena of boarding aircraft has tortured scientists, passengers, and philosophers around the world. The process has challenged the scientific community’s current understanding of entropy, as well as psychology.

Now, however, new research clears that all up. The results of a ground-breaking experiment confirm a notion many suspected from the start: no one, except for you, knows how to board a plane.

Using a mock airport terminal, a flight simulator, and hundreds of volunteers equipped with cranial EEG monitors, a research team from UCLA conducted the experiment. In hundreds of trials, flights would be called to board by gate agents over a PA system. Each time, no matter the airline, destination, or volume of the speaker, chaos would ensue upon boarding.

Often, semi-coherent lines would form, until a rogue passenger would spontaneously create a new line, causing other passengers to queue haphazardly. Some passengers yelled at the gate agents. Several volunteers, assigned the gate agent role, left the experiment mid-trial because of the unrelenting stress.

“It was like the Zimbardo experiment, in which we learned the truly depraved nature of humanity. However, unlike that experiment, we found one genius floating in a sea of morons,” said one of the UCLA scientists.

“It’s actually really simple and I don’t know why other people don’t get it,” you said, shrugging. “Maybe it’s because I travel for work.”

A scientist who contributed to the study remarked on the findings. “It is just incredible. Obviously, in the same way water is wet, we knew this all along. But still, we had to prove it. That’s the beauty of science.”

A volunteer passenger recalled the experiment in awe. “It’s very difficult to board a plane,” he said. “We all stumbled over each other and carelessly threw our luggage around, trying to land it in the overhead bin. But then we saw you. Everyone started clapping, watching you enter the plane with true elegance and mastery.”

The research lab also plans to explore why you are the only person using the correct combination of empathy and efficiency when de-boarding the plane, but trials are still in their initial stages.

For more satire from Fortune, click here.

About the Authors
By Anne VanderMey
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By Ashwin Rodrigues
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