Airplane Boarding Inefficiencies

Already with our inefficient boarding process there's often a 15-30 minute wait to get permission to fly. Boarding isn't the bottleneck.

Exactly, there is no incentive or profit for the airlines to speed the boarding process. In fact, it takes a fixed amount of time to turn around a plane so if you can make it seem like it is the passengers fault and not their, all the better. It might even be that it is to the benefit of the airlines for it to take longer.

I'm really surprised they were able to cut boarding time in half with this, my experience is that the gate isn't the bottleneck, it's little old ladies with 50lb carryons struggling to get them into the overhead bin and blocking the aisle.

There is a boarding time on every ticket. Anyone who has flown more than once knows this is not optional - closing the gate and departing early is at the airline’s discretion.Once they started boarding and the queue is empty, they will continue with the procedures for the flight, they have an incentive to keep their on-time stats. It’s not like a train where you can simply step in a minute before it leaves.

Sure, it's annoying, but it doesn't really delay anyone, since throughput at the gate agent is much higher than throughput at boarding door.

This reminds of airport nowadays. They were getting a lot of complaints about the slow speed that checked luggage comes out of after landing, so they simply moved all arriving flights' gates to the furthest away possible from the luggage claiming area. People had to literally walk across the airport after they get off, but complaints about luggage speed dropped significantly.

I'd factor in the fact that the people density is lower up front, probably aiding you in getting off the plane faster.

There is always a long slow cue on check-in and luggage drop-off. At least for the budget airlines who don't hire just enough agents probably. So this seems like a real time-saver for everybody. I wonder why not all airports implement it, like, now.

Don't forget about the time sitting on the tarmac.

Some of the deplaners hold up the next flight they need to board. Airlines could optimize that.