Ah. In which case you've failed to follow reasonable instructions from airline staff nonetheless.

EDIT: I just read your edit. How is following instructions to board in groups unreasonable? It makes it easier for staff to get passengers into the aircraft in an orderly and safe fashion.

You haven't established their reasonableness - if I paid as much as you did for my seat. Make up your mind - is the prioritization of boarding based upon the Airline's maximization of their revenues, or simply to increase the efficiency for ALL passengers? These two may be at cross purposes.

Read above.

I did. I'll reitterate - you haven't established the reasonableness of the "rules".

I would contend they are no more reasonable than the Kabuki security theatre we all must go through prior to getting to the gate. Those are also rules - but most folks here would agree that they are not entirely reasonable or rational. But unlike the dictums of airline policy - THOSE rules at least have been established through the actions of democratically elected representation - which gives them a MORE reasonable and equitable underlying basis than the airline boarding policies - which are often inherently inequitable - do.

BTW, I never said that I DO attempt to circumvent the boarding priority - I'm just taking issue with the underlying assumption that the assigning of those priorities is in any way a fundamentally legitimate set of rules.

If you need to evacuate the aircraft quickly it's far more difficult if there are carryons in the way. It's therefore safer to board in groups where baggage can be more or less stowed in the lockers before the next group comes on board with their carryons. I suspect it'll also be quicker filling cabin segments at a time since you won't have bottlenecks at certain sections with everyone milling in at once. Like I said, safety and efficiency.

I'm talking about different boarding groups within the coach cabin - First or business class and the "lockers" is irrelevant in that regard. I agree that someone who paid a premium for a premium service class has the right to board earlier. My issue is with the fellow passengers in the same service class that I'm in, who may have paid the same or less for their tickets as I have.

The point I'm making applies to coach as well, perhaps I should have said "overhead bins" instead.

As I said earlier, the overhead bins in the coach cabin are a scarce resource, and they should be allocated on some sort of fair market basis, or some efficient boarding basis - but now we presently have a hodge-podge of both methods on the same flight, that defies the logic of either methodology being used exclusively. Hence the "reasonableness" of the existing allocation of boarding priority is brought into question.

I understand what you're saying but I guess I'm prioritising passenger and crew safety. I would rather be able to get everyone off an aircraft in seconds without having to climb over people's baggage in case of something like a fire. In my mind that seems reasonable.

Note to self: Don't do business with lhgreengrd

The boarding process is a condition of the ticket, if you don't like it, find a different airline that has a different process.
No need to break the rules that you agreed to when you paid for the ticket.
The question here is not if the process is correct, it's, are you going to follow the process you agreed to already by choosing this airline, or are you going to be an A-Hole and try to cheat the system.

technically, anyone can claim they need "extra assistance" and can board before everyone. I dont see too many folks do that, but still....

I've done it back in my younger days and was never turned away. I'm older now and board by procedure and now enjoy seeing people get denied.

I guess we all grow up one day

"I'll decide which rules I think are reasonable, and only follow those" is a terrible philosophy to live by. Sadly, I know some can actually internally justify them. Imagine if the gate agent said "I know you're in this zone and should board now, but I think you should board later, get out of line".

I believe it's much harder to enforce the zone rules when bp's are on mobile phones and everyone is self scanning. AFAIK, the "current zone" isn't encoded in the scanner so it won't reject you for being early. So an orderly boarding process is enabled by pax following the rules put in place for an orderly boarding process.

It's more efficient to board passengers in the back first so they aren't in the way of others. Sometimes it's more efficient to board window seats before aisle seats. And, of course, the airline may board people with status early just as a perk. Lots of decisions go into the boarding order. Do all of them make sense? Maybe not. But the airline has a right to make reasonable rules and we as civilized humans have an obligation to follow all reasonable rules.