Originally Posted by
Sixth Freedom
I don't think this is unreasonable to be honest because lounge charging capacity is not really measured by the number of sockets, but in socket-hours (i.e. number of sockets x number of hours the lounge is open per day, or if you like the number of sockets x number of hours that a given person is in the lounge).
If the person in question took two sockets three times to fully charge the six devices he would use exactly the same amount of charging capacity. Using all six sockets at once means that more sockets are free later, which is not unambiguously better or worse that the situation observed.
Most people will be in there for 30 to 60 minutes or maybe even more, but there are so many flights that every couple of minutes a socket will become free. In that time any given passenger is likely to find the sockets they need if they look hard enough. And if they are in there for less time then probably their devices would not get a good charge anyway, so it does not matter. And if they forget before the last 20 minutes then they should have been more organised.
I'm afraid your argument has a couple of holes and does not retain much water because:
(a) most people do not have 6 devices to charge, but one or two, and
(b) latency, or service-wait-time, is important here.
Many passengers do not have time to wait for another device to charge before charging theirs, so two device-charge intervals. Most also have one device that is important to charge, others are secondary. So therefore the critical capacity number for passengers to achieve what they need (charge the most important device now) is number of passengers charging at one time, not some charger-hour usage metric. Assuming that charging all devices of one passenger in parallel is equivalent to charging them in sequence is assuming that passengers have infinite time to wait, and they clearly do not.
In queueing or data network terms, we need quality of service controls to prevent congestion of the available resource by over-consumers causing denial of service to other consumers within the required service time . In British terms: Form an orderly queue and don't use more than one socket when others are waiting.
(for example in this particular case, I doubt the gentleman at issue needed to charge his shaver; shaver power is available in-flight even in cabins without at-seat power, and he could certainly charge his shaver at his destination hotel (or arrival lounge) also)