You're not wrong. When the first checked bag fee appeared, so did the extra five minutes of boarding time printed on the boarding pass. And you know what? Boarding is taking longer now, and flights are being delayed at the gate while bags are gate checked. It used to be rare to see more than one or two gate checked bags toward the end of boarding; in the last seven days I've had six mainline flights and two Express flights and all but one flight has left the gate late, in part due to the fact that boarding took longer than it used to because of all the carry on bags. And I've seen as many as 10 bags come back up the aisle of a 735 during boarding to be gate checked. I've also witnessed more than 25 gate checked bags on an ERJ that had fewer than 40 passengers on it.

This is total nonsense, and the industry would have been far better off to just increase the base fare across the board.