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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

Why was it ever a problem? Perhaps this is US issue, (in Russian and EU airports) everybody lines up first come, first board. Then the process is really fast. Everybody just takes their seat and that's it.

The landing wait is annoying but boarding is practically a non-issue.

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The video does say that the random FIFO is more efficient than the boarding group thing, but you have to pay extra to get priority boarding, so airlines are incentivized to make the boarding annoying enough to make you pay for it.

Presumably they depends on the exact specifics of the economics involved - the airlines are only incentivised the way you say if there's more money to be made from the amount of revenue brought in by people paying to jump the queue than savings to be had from the fact that for every minute less their typical boarding takes is a minute less of time they need to have a departure lounge allocated for each plane, & a minute less of time for a number of staff working it.

> so airlines are incentivized to make the boarding annoying enough to make you pay for it.

until you "board first" with a budget airline at an airport that makes you stand just outside the gate in a common (loses queue) and un-airconditioned space until they're ready to actually board. Then paying for boarding first is an absolute privilege, especially when the riffraff can run to the plane first anyway.

Why would you want to board first, though? What's the fun to be stuck in a plane? I try not to hurry in boarding line to board just in time.

Carryon bags - a fair amount of the time the airlines run out of overhead baggage space for the last people on the plane, and force you to check your bag.

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