Originally Posted by subwaybill
I've seen the all-at-once boarding on my last few flights and it does seem to work faster. I'm not exactly sure why, but if it gets the flight out earlier, I'm for it.
Well, if normal group boarding has 5 or 6 rows boarding at a time, that's about 5 or 6 people that can be stowing their bags and getting into their seat at a time.
Free for all boarding means you can potentially have people from 30+ rows loading their carryons and getting into their seat at the same time. This is why some airlines have all window seats board first, then the middle seats, and then the aisles. Instead of pushing 30 people into a 5 or 6 row area, let 60 people get on and do their thing across 30 rows; there's way more space this way.
Put another way, there's no need to waste the time for people to begin sitting in rows 1-15 just because people in rows 16-30 haven't sat down yet.