I just love this forum and all of the surprises it harbours.
There I go, curious to learn something about ground operations of Air France at Buenos Aires (=EZE!)... and then our friend brunos takes me to a trip on the Côte d'Azur
Now, on that trip to the land of inefficiency which is ruled by the Masters of AF: I wonder to what extent AF counters its own initiatives with others. For instance, they want to save cost and time by doing automatic CKI. Result: they dispatch people in such a bizarre way that they then come to the airport to ask for a change in seat, which takes people to man the desks. Often flights are full by the time that people get to the airport, so they are unhappy. So they ask on board, where still they cannot easily get what they like, but they slow boarding. End result: unhappy customers, higher costs for people that cannot make customers happy, and slower boarding.
Another thing is luggage in the overhead bins. Often time is wasted before departure to find space for people's belongings. particularly annoying is when people seated in row 28 place their luggage in the bin overhead row 3, typically a Business Class row. Because FAs do not want to upset the C class customer they try to find some stowage somewhere else, which takes time. If the FAs standing around the cabin anyway and doing not a lot (no more BP checks), why don't they keep an eye at least on the overhead bins in the Affaires and PE cabins? Keep those free for people seated in the front row and at the same time be strict about simply putting in the hold those Y class bags that do not fit in the overhead racks instead of looking for space - saves time, and upsets "only" the lower margin customers.
And so on...
Easyjet observation on my limited experience (3 flights this year - but I got myself an easyjet Plus card!): they are extremely disciplined. For instance priority boarding by bus. In Geneva many EZY departures to French airports are boarded by bus. So I wondered what the point was about priority boarding. Well here was the trick: they had a divider in the middle of the bus. They first boarded the priority boarding pax in the back, then closed that door, then boarded the "general public" through the other doors in the front part of the bus. At the plane, first opened the back doors to let out prio pax, then the others. Smart.