Why does it seem that foreign airlines are much more efficient than most US based airlines? On my most recent AA flight, I was really thinking hard about this. One thing that comes to mind specifically is many foreign airlines have multiple boarding doors for entering and exiting the aircraft. Passengers in lower rows enter through the front boarding doors and passengers in the higher boarding rows enter through the rear boarding doors.

I have also been on many planes in Europe where upon exit, I walked down a set of stairs and directly onto the tarmac and then just walked into the terminal or took a bus to the terminal. The exit process seemed much quicker than going through a jet bridge and walking for 15mins through the terminal. Why does the US not do this?