Pretty simple.

Don't give Priority boarding to credit card holders. It ruins the complete concept of it anyways when someone paying $95 for a MP Explorer card get's Group 2 boarding!

You probably shouldn't visit Minneapolis-St. Paul (the city area, not just MSP airport). To people there, any building you park in is a "parking ramp" - not just the slanted parts that take cars from one level to another. What's more, most of them don't even realize that it's a regional term; they go somewhere else and expect everyone to understand what they mean when they ask "is there a parking ramp near here?"

Put your phone and your watch in your m/purse. Carry a notepad instead of a laptop. Also fits.

Fortunately!
The securty-at-the-gate and the holding pen are great time wasters and very inconvenient. I rather battle during the boarding process.

As for the boarding time ... I never understood why populating a plane takes fractions of minutes in Oz and is such a struggle in the US, let alone Europe ...

Definitely the norm in India. Where AI, 6E, etc. when bussed (sometimes, for what seems like basically forever, esp. in BOM) to the plane on the tarmac, boarding is done through both front and back doors. 6E even has messaging in the buses and on the ramps or stairs (yes, they use ramps, usually), saying which rows should board through the front doors and which through the back (IIRC, rows 1 - 15 in the front, 16+ in the back, but its easy for them since they operate only 320s).

My favorite, the flight attendant that is walking against the flow of boarding patrons.

KLM is trying to implement some smart boarding

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/klm-f...u-flights.html

It didn't...


Searching for "Jason Steffen" on Flyer Talk produces these threads, dating back to 2008....

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...lgorithms.html
(seems to have been the first mention, in Nature magazine 6.5 years ago)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...g-process.html
(NPR report, 2008)

There are more, including...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...er-planes.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...a-study-3.html

You do realize that you are trying to apply logic to the behaviour of people who are being herded down a cattle chute into an enclosed space that isn't big enough for everyone to comfortably fit into.

Expectations should always be line with reality. Expecting airplane boarding to be a smooth process regardless of how you do it is simply an unrealistic expectation. Flying is not a pleasant experience and is never likely to change for the better.

Personally, I always wait for 'last call for boarding flight XXX' to be called. When everyone else is on and I am one of the last to board. I don't do carry-on at all, couldn't care less about rushing to secure space in an overhead bin (how bourgeois can you get). My attitude is a bit like, 'OK, have all you kiddies done with your childish behavoiur and settled down now? Good, now I will get on the plane.' But even then, I am just making the best of a bad situation.

Oh how I wish someone would invent a 'beam me up Scotty' device that got you to your destination in seconds. But even then, there would be line-ups. ;-)

IME they don't even say "parking" just "ramp."

Q: "Where should I park for the downtown Dayton's?"
A: "There's a ramp near there on Hennepin."
Q: "...and the garage is near this ramp?"

Why stop there?

Automatic bin openers? Nice idea! That way nobody stashes their rollaboard in space above my seat!

In the army we managed to board a C-130 under four minutes flat with several pieces of carryon each.
Deboarding was even faster: 14 seconds after green light goes on.

What if I need to work during the flight?

And what if the airline loses my luggage? Do I wear the same clothes and do without any toiletries such as deodorant at my destination until the bag is delivered?

One would think that the natives here would recognize the difference between a closed and often heated garage versus an unprotected parking structure. Fortunately people don't often park on expressway on and off ramps.