For a lot of people I think that it in fact is too much to ask because it seems like almost any time I go to get on a plane people are behaving as though it is a race of sorts and if they don't act like a selfish goon that they are not going to get a seat.
I am always annoyed at the way people behave in a "me first" sort of way at airports when if you look around a bit, it doesn't take a huge amount of intelligence to understand that acting rash and jockeying to get a few places up front is not going to speed anything up for any of us.
Here is a fun thread entitled "Man shaves 1.7 seconds off 2-hour flight by standing up as soon as plane lands" and this happens on every single flight I have ever been on. What's the motivation? You can't get off the plane until the door has been attached the jetway and the rows in front of you get to get off first anyway, you goons.
Getting on the plane is just as bad if not worse. When they assign you group numbers this is designed so that the people in the back of the plane will board first and therefore we don't have a bunch of people standing in the aisles that are blocking people from carrying on to their seats in the back. Yet nearly every time that I have heard a staff member announce that only certain zones like "zone 5" should board now, something like 90% of the total passenger mix queues up frantically.
I've been in some terminals where as soon as the woman (it's almost always a woman" says anything on the microphone in the boarding area, half of the people will start to race towards the entrance of the gate without even listening to anything that she says. In some funny instances the staff member was actually informing everyone that the flight was going to be delays by 20 minutes and a few nerds still frantically rushed to the line.
I just don't understand human behavior in airports. Getting on the plane first offers virtually no benefit and lets say you accomplish your dream of being the very first person on the plane. Now what? You have to sit there and wait for everyone else to board as well and there's a good chance you are going to have to stand up to let other people into the row as well. It's just stupid at the highest level.
People are also very rude on planes and we have plenty of people being arrested on planes videos to prove this. I was once on a plane where a woman was pleading with the other passengers to allow her to the front because she was in danger of missing her connecting flight and while most of the people got out of the way and let her go to the front, there were a few people that resisted and the flight attendants had to intervene to calm people down.
Airports and airplanes are stressful enough without this nonsense folks.
I was on a trans-Pacific flight once where a guy didn't even wait for the plane to fully arrive at the gate. As soon as the plane touched down he ran to the front of the plane through the outstretched arms of a flight attendant. The plane, at the time he charge to the front, was probably still going hundreds of miles an hour. I was quite pleased when I did finally get off the plane that he was being arrested by airport security on the jetway when I was exiting.
I have noticed that airlines have become a lot more vigilant as far as not allowing people to board outside of their assigned zone yet people still try to do it. I just don't understand why? There is zero prize at the other side, just a less comfortable seat than the one you currently have in the waiting area. Why the frantic scramble to get there as soon as possible?
Airports bring out the worst in people I think and after all these years of travel it has only gotten worse. I recall when air travel was kind of a nice experience but now it is the opposite of that. A lot of this has to do with their being more people traveling and more people being able to afford to travel, which is a good thing, but most of it is just the general public behaving like irrational wild animals.
Can't we all just behave a bit? none of us actually want to be here and getting somewhere first changes nothing so tell me, what's the point?