The seats are assigned. People have been standing in line for 15 minutes now. Why on earth would anyone want to stand there, when they could just sit and wait until the line clears?
I understand wanting to get off a plane ASAP, but boarding? You just end up sitting on the plane, waiting for everyone else to get on.
The seats are assigned, the baggage compartments are self-serve.
Limited overhead space. If you wait, you increase the chance there won’t be room for your overhead bag.
The real answer. I sometimes have a laptop in my carry on. I’ll be fucked if I’m going to hand it over to the savages on the tarmac.
A lot of airlines nowadays seem to charge extra for a carry on than they do a checked bag. So I tend to bring one checked bag and one small backpack that can fit under the seat, which isn’t classified as a carry on.
Yup yup, carry on and personal item. You can live for a week out of that. Plus no wait at the baggage claim, and no risk of the airline stealing or breaking your stuff.
If you have it in a backpack you can put it under the seat in front of you unless you’re in a front seat or one next to an overwing emergency exit.
This is all officially allowed and I’ve used it plenty of times.
Surprised no one mentioned this, but carry-on bags are no longer free for all - only free for the first ones in line.
People who use up more than their third of the locker, forcing others out of their own space are subhuman.
I donno, I think airlines that cram in more seats without increasing overhead storage are subhuman.
why not both?
Cause it shouldn’t be the customers responsibility to accommodate other customers, it’s the airline’s responsibility.
Ah yeah I do agree with that. I was partially referencing the meme, but also there’s those kind of people who would inconsiderately take up others’ space until the airline made them move. There’s enough to be annoyed at both! :P
True, agreed!
Both. Both is good.
Really? I haven’t flown in awhile but I always thought if your carry on doesn’t fit they will check it for you. Has that changed? Could be different for each airline.
Yep, you’re right. If you don’t want your carry on checked, then be in the front of the line.
Anxiety (especially now that planes are oversold and standby passengers are nearby waiting to grab empty seats…), the need for overhead bin space, not wanting to have to climb over people, illogical impatience, etc.
I’m hard of hearing and terrified of standing in the wrong place at an airport and missing the visual cues to board the flight. Once boarding starts and people start queueing up, I usually get in line because it’s helpful to see what everyone in front of me is doing - the order that they hand over paperwork or get carry on double checked. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to hear the attendant if they ask me questions at the gate because it’s so noisy, so I like to at least feel like I’m prepared.
One time I was flying with crutches and qualified for early pre-boarding because I needed the plane wheelchair (skychair). I sat right next to the gate desk and waited, then I started seeing people queue up so I quickly joined the line, wondering how pre-boarding works when the whole plane of passengers are already vying to be at the front of the line.
I get to the front, the attendant looks at my ticket then after some awkward back and forward eventually I realised they were telling me I’ll have to wait till everyone has boarded to get the sky-chair on. I should have come to the desk when pre boarding was announced. I pointed that I was sitting right in front of them… Apparently they were called my name 3 times over the loudspeaker.
Apparently airports can only comprehend one disability at a time (if that!) they knew I was hard of hearing (it’s on my ticket) but still thought calling me over the PA was the best way to get the attention of the deaf person sitting 80cm from their desk.
So I sat back down and waited for the line to clear, then I got back up when there were 2 people in line, and after another back and forward I learned that they had tried calling my name again about halfway through boarding because they only had one skychair and it was now or never because the chair had told fly with the other passenger because their arrival airport didn’t have a chair, or something, I dunno, anyway I kind of had to crawl down the ailse to get to my chair because in the past I’ve just used the backs of chairs to swing myself along, but the plane was full so I couldn’t do that.
Hard of hearing also. It’s so frustrating that text signs that list announcements are so rare.
Captions on television/movies and games are commonplace, but in the real world, very few places care.
Might be because I’m in a red state for a few more years due to family; blue states likely tend to be more aware of issues like ours.
I did see written callouts of upcoming tram stops once, but I can’t recall which airport. It may have been ORD.
This is a valid reason.
My cousin gets serious panic attacks and had to fly alone. He was so nervous, I had to be on video call to help him at the customer service desk. We worked out for him and he was standing “near” line for about 45 minutes, which was more comforting for him than just waiting in a seat.
People are posting a lot of maybe more rational reasons, but I think there’s another answer that’s more in line with just being a human. Airports suck, air travel, generally, sucks and the whole process is riddle with both intentional and also just unavoidable misery. Every time a new step in the sequence of unpleasant and boring steps that is air travel nears, we start to anticipate it and get anxious to move on to that next step in the process. It doesn’t make it faster, it likely only makes the misery arguably worse, but some times people just can’t help trying to mentally hasten things even if in reality nothing is hastened at all.
I’m about to be seated for five hours straight with no possibility of standing or moving around. I’m standing while I still have the opportunity.
Yup, exactly what I think. So I used to sit in the gate area until the last possible moment until I found out that if you wait too long, they’ll give away your seat. Plus since they are charging people for checking luggage through, you have to get that overhead bin before it’s gone, unless your carry-on fits in front of you, which it doesn’t if you’re on a bulkhead. So, now I stand in line, frustrated by that and all the other crap we have to go through when traveling by plane these days. Looking at you TSA.
The sooner I get to my seat the sooner I’m out of the god damned airport and can begin whatever escapism I’ve chosen for the flight. The thing I truly hate is the airport and being in it.
I didn’t used too get in line. But I’ve had a number of times someone took to much carry on (how I don’t know) and took all of the overhead space, refused to fix it, and the airline didn’t give a fuck either.
CGP Grey has a good video on a better way to board planes.
I know he acknowledges the capitalistic barrier to this solution but the other issue I see most often are folks simply not being there by boarding time. These methods all assume you would have everyone ready to board in their respective groups at once. I would imagine that throwing a few folks out of order in even the modified Steffen approach could bring down the theoretical time by quote a bit.
I like Bill Burrs stance as well
Because you do not have assigned overhead bag storage, and people bring either bags that are too big, or bring multiple bags
Because once through thebgate, there’s the line of actually getting into your seat because some people tend to stand in the aisle and block everyone while taking their jacket off. And if you’re in a prioritized boarding group you can circumvent most of these by getting into the plane early, which results in more time watching youtube while sitting on my ass.
Source: frequent flier. In fact, I’m typing this from seat 9F on an Airbus A320neo right after sitting down.
There’s no way the airlines allow you to take a donkey onboard, surely?
I rarely sit when waiting for a plane (at least not for maybe an hour before). I’m about to sit for hours, so I don’t want to start now.
This right here for me, I’m pretty tall too and can’t afford first class so if I’m about to be cramped for 3+ hours I’m gonna stretch my legs first
Do you have anywhere to be instead?
