moondog

The better way is to let the airline people deal with your bags, so you can comfortably board last without a worry in your mind.

swampwiz

I must be an eccentric. I try to be the last one in line so I don't have to wait in line so much, especially at the aircraft.

fastflyer

The airlines could solve these problems. One method: tensabarrier queues, like in Europe, with Gate Agents validating that people in their respective queues are in fact in that zone.

Another method, boarding from the rear door -- but with the same boarding order as now. The premium cabins and elites would walk through an empty plane with plentiful overhead bin space. It would also probably speed up the boarding process. Of course, you couldn't do this with jetways. It would need to be via stairs.

Mid-cabin boarding on larger planes accomplishes these goals also.

teddybear99

The reason the premium cabins are up front is to allow the faster boarding and deplaning as all boarding is from the front. If all boarding was from the rear of the plane, they would most likely put the premium seats there.

Why can't they be via jetways? Instead of putting the plane in nose first at the gate, the plane could be backed in and the jetway brought to the rear doors. It would make it easier for the planes to pull out as they would not need a tug to back them out. The negative would be all the debris knocked into the building as the jet engines spool up.

CyBeR

Why the hell don't we do that? Just divide up all overhead bins into two or three parts, marked with the seat number. If your carryon doesn't fit in that, it goes in the hold.

televisor

There are more seats than there is space in the overheads, unless you hugely reduce permitted carry-on size.

Minus the seat-numbering/allocation this would be an excellent idea though.

CyBeR

A subdivision could be made that accommodates one division per seat on the plane. This may indeed necessitate smaller carryons but I just don't see that as a huge problem. People can just check the kitchen sink when they take it with them.

televisor

On a non-spacebin plane, that would result in most people's laptops not fitting into overhead bins (they won't fit vertically as it is, and you've just stopped them from fitting horizontally). That is sure to be fun for everyone involved.

lhgreengrd1

When I fly, I am generally carrying expensive camera gear, which absolutely has to be stowed in an overhead compartment- because the airlines will not accept full liability for it if it goes missing or is damaged after going into the baggage hold. Since the airlines do not provide enough overhead capacity to nearly guarantee I will have access to an overhead bin if I board late, I will aggressively try to be at the front of whatever boarding group I am in.

Until I can stow valuable and fragile gear as checked bags with virtual certainty that I will get all of my gear back in fully working order after the flight, I will continue to try my damnedest to be at the front of my boarding group.

televisor

FWIW you can try to declare excess value if an airline tries to force you to gate-check, it seems that in most cases passengers attempting to do so have been allowed to board with their bag (I believe the process is rather bureacratic, hence GA's would prefer to avoid it) - however I've not seen many cases of this on FT. In your case this is more than justified, but I agree that it's easier just to arrive early and stand. (Potentially useful if you're running late, e.g. on a tight connection, though.)

Note that US airlines tend to set a limit even to excess valuation, e.g. $5000 which is likely to be nowhere close to the value of professional photographic equipment. I don't know if that means they'd refuse checking it, or would limit their liability to that amount. (Looking at austrian airlines I noticed that they only allow excess valuations up to 48 hours in advanced, I haven't done a more general sample of airlines worldwide.)

farci

As practiced by Norwegian on their short-haul services in Scandinavia. They use the jetway up to Row X, direct rear seats passengers down the jetway stairs to the apron and back up through stairs to the plane's rear door

beachmouse

A thread on the camera issue and the real concerns about checking the good stuff:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ct-damage.html