Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
This thread perfectly sums up why flying with US airlines, and with BA, is so unpleasant. A situation is created where everyone is encouraged to bring on board all their possessions, including the kitchen sink. They then spend hours messing around with overhead lockers and FAs making endless pleading announcements. Meanwhile, those who board late with modest carry ons are seriously inconvenienced, so feel they must board early. Hence the scrum and the barging and the sheer waste of everyone's time. It's the one part of the FR experience that is far superior to the legacy airlines.
In my view the problem is that passengers have to stay out of the boarding lanes until their groups are called. There is no other structure in the gate area that would cause people to stand in line, so people mill around and it’s not clear who should go first when a boarding group is called.
I’d prefer if people in Group 1 would be asked, or permitted, to line up whenever they wanted, so whoever was eager enough to get on board early could stand in the boarding lane, which would cause a line to be formed. Same for each other group. There would need to be a rope or some kind of indication of where lines would be formed for this to work, though.