This guy’s take on the boarding process cracks me up.
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ALWAYS carry a foldable bag (can be backpack, duffel, or open sack) with you, for just this sort of situation. You can get a cheap one for almost nothing, or even just bring a plastic bag from a store if that’s all you’ve got.
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Exactly. And don’t forget how much time the airlines spend telling you how much they love and appreciate their customers and how everything they do is for us - the people they call human lice!
Fuck you airlines. You took an enjoyable experience, turned it into a hellscape and now are ridiculing your victims.
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This isn’t a solution either, because a lot of people can’t (or don’t want to) deal with the added delay of waiting for checked baggage. Most of the time I don’t care but a few times I’ve gotten in very late and the luggage takes 30 minutes to come down the chute (which means I miss the last train outbound on the MBTA.)
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Also, playing “Did the airline mislay my luggage?” roulette.
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Would I then have the right to sell my empty bin space to another passenger?
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It would be far more efficient to have plane boarding from back to front. But the entire point of the system is to promote people paying more for premium seats and impose a capitalistic pecking order.
To make economy class customers feel like they never left the ground by treating them like dirt.
I owe @MagicFox a Coke
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It’s a Marxist parable about how social class makes people miserable and inefficient.
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This is an incorrect assumption. There’s a great deal of science behind the most optimized boarding process. Back to front is actually the slowest method compared to other techniques like WILMA (window, middle, aisle).
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Most, if not all, European low cost airlines now charge for overhead cabin luggage.
I frequently fly IT-SE and back, and would do anything to not have to wait at the carousel (especially at FCO).
So much so that for a quite long period, due to accumulated points, I had free stow luggage, but still payed for the cabin one (a 27 liters Deuter mountain backpack- it miraculously fits the size checking cage, if put in diagonally).
COVID burned all my privileges…
I am definitely a gate louse.
I stand/walk as much as possible before I’m strapped to a quite uncomfortable chair for hours and get early to the gate - 90% for reason number one.
Alas, gone are the days I could fly Ethiopian - they had a stopover in Rome on their way to or from Addis Ababa.
Nicest cabin crew (and wonderful uniforms), quite decent food, and I always manged to get a free business upgrade - very cheap to boost.
When they renewed the fleet (from 757s to 350s and 787s) they removed the stop in Rome - TBH, I suspect they were pressured by Star Alliance when they joined in 2011, as their prices would have killed the Rome-Stockholm route for SAS and Lufthansa…
Go tell that to my double-bass player friend.
She’d never abandon her instrument to the baggage handling crew and machines, so she always needs to book two seats when flying.
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…and enlarge the seats so you do not have to worry about the armrests or manspreading. And perhaps give enough leg room so your knees don’t touch the seat in front of you. An under the seat compartment large enough for a carry on and a large purse would be lovely too… a person can dream…
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As a semi-regular flier, what would really simplify boarding is if all the zone 5 fliers sat down when zone 4 is boarding, etc etc. like… just chill. There are something like eight zones on a big air canada flight, and if you’re standing in line waiting for your number to be called while blocking all the other people behind you then you’re never actually going to get on.
I’ve mostly solved this with a lounge card. As a habitual cheapskate zone 9 flier, I stay the hell out of the gate altogether and just hammer back my beverage allotment before wandering over when it’s my turn.
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Inefficient for all, but some get a cocktail before takeoff.
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There’s more weird history from WWII, how lice saved some polish intellectuals from the concentration camps:
It features prominently in Andrzej Żuławski’s excellent film The Third Part of the Night.
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No, no, no; you’ve got it all wrong: any seat-villein at most enjoys the usufruct of an overhead bin.
Admitedly I don’t fly in the US, but this is normal on all the flights I take. There is one queue for Business/First class and then all the other passengers are boarded in order - Families with small children and passengers who need assistance first, and then in blocks from back to front of the plane. I can’t recall the last time I did a flight where that wasn’t the process.
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Well, if they’re gonna be like that, then I’ve got a name for them: Gate spice.
There. I’ve said it.
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They could justify this order now, especially for winter travel, to avoid spreading illness. I had to fly during Covid a few times, and one airline had us board tail to nose to avoid close contact with fellow passengers. It was one of the quickest and most comfortable boarding processes ever.
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Gatekeepers gonna gatekeep.
