A scientific study found that when economy passengers walk through business class when boarding an airplane, there is an eightfold increase in passenger air rage incidents.
"There's this uh study that was done on when people enter airplanes and they walk through business class, economy walks through business class, there's an eight times increase in passenger rage incidents." (said at 2:01:51)
A 2016 observational study by DeCelles and Norton published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed several years of flight data from an international airline to evaluate the relationship between cabin design and disruptive passenger behavior ('air rage'). The authors found that 'situational inequality'—boarding from the front, which requires economy passengers to walk through the first-class cabin rather than boarding from the middle—was associated with a 2.18-fold increase in the odds of air rage in economy class and an 11.86-fold increase in first class. The presence of a first-class cabin was associated with a 3.84-fold increase in economy cabin incidents. While the study supports the claim that walking through higher-tier cabins during boarding is associated with increased air rage incidents, stating that it causes an 'eightfold increase' overstates the measured effect in economy class (~2.2-fold increase) and relies on observational, non-randomized airline data.
- partial: Physical and situational inequality on airplanes predicts air rage. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2016)
"Situational inequality-boarding from the front (requiring walking through the first class cabin) versus the middle of the plane-also significantly increases the odds of air rage in both economy and first class." (abstract, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)