Well, that’s the thing, I didn’t notice anything wrong until it started not working. Once I saw it not working, it seemed like this eventuality would’ve been an obvious one to plan for (people wanting to line up to board).
It very well may be like any other airport, which is too bad.
I’d be very surprised if the bottleneck in loading planes was anything other than the people on the plane trying to get their carry on baggage stowed (doubly true since the airlines stupidly started incentivizing more people carrying on bigger baggage with checked baggage fees). The mob of people trying to get in line to board may look like chaos, but I doubt it actually slows anything down in an appreciable way.
You can always just stay seated until they call your flight for the final time. You’ll almost certainly still have to wait in line at the end of the jetway, or in the plane aisle, so it’s not like lining up in the terminal saves any time. You’ll also probably find all the overhead bins full, due to the aforementioned airline baggage pricing idiocy, which is of course why people mob to get on the plane early.
Another thing to consider, when it comes to which jetway airports use and which may have contributed to this situation, is that not all jetways/gates can handle all kinds of planes. Depending on the jetway model, they may be set at certain heights to accommodate, for example, CRJs and E-jets, but cannot be used for Dash-8s or A318s or B737s. The distance between gates limits the airplane type as well, by wingspan, and the area around a given gate might affect which type(s) of ground service equipment can be operated in a given area. The tractorfor a CRJ is much smaller than the one for a B747! The available apron area for pushback and turnaround, as well as the existing taxiway routing and access to runways also plays a huge role in determining which aircraft are allowed where in an airport. Not all planes can use the same taxiways for reasons of wingspan, length, turn radii at intersections, etc. When a new terminal is built, it’s unlikely that the entire airport layout is modified, so if one end can accommodate the regional jets and the other end the big birds, then no matter how new the terminal, that’s how the gates will be assigned.
It was just bad luck, perhaps, that all the gates were in use at the same time, but it’s often easier from an airport management perspective to do that rather than be spread out around the airport, so there you have it.