I always do the “gate lice” thing unless i have enough status that i know I’ll be able to find a decent place for my carryon. Yeah, i know the airlines hold me in contempt. I pay them anyway, and I’m certainly not going to be bothered by them calling me names behind my back.
I agree that just waiting for the three rows behind you to clear won’t work. What I’ve had good luck with, though, is asking someone to hand me my bag. I always try to park my bag near me (people sitting in the back actually WANT their bag in the front? Wtf? Why?) but if it ends up a couple rows behind me, i stare longingly at it when everyone is standing and fussing with baggage, waiting for the people way up front to exit. And someone generally asks if it’s my bag, and i say “yes” and he pulls it down and hands it to me. And i rest it on the seat and stand awkwardly until my row deplanes.
Back when I traveled for a living and lived in Burbank, this was so wonderful coming home. Especially on southwest with no assigned seating. Most idiots would rush to get in at the front at whatever other airport, not realizing that the back was just as quick to deplane. So I would take my time queuing to board and would always have an available rear seat to GTFO as soon as we parked.
In October, I’ll be flying into Yakima, a tiny airport that has exactly one commercial arrival and departure each day, so I think it’s safe to assume they don’t have a jetway and I’ll be deplaning by stairs.
I am shocked and dubious that people would really do that.
As mentioned above, I want my bag near me. Not a whole plane away. I would be surprised if I am alone in that.
I ride in the back a lot and about half the time in civvies so I’m ordinary-looking. I often board late and end up well back in coach with my suitcase 3-5 rows further back & my laptop bag under the seat in front of me. Which forms a nice footrest.
Professionally speaking:
The nature of deboarding is that random people get stuck wrangling their stuff down which produces a gap in the flow forward of them while they obstruct everyone behind them. In each tiny gap you can move aft from your seating row to the now-empty row behind you. Lather rinse repeat until you get back to your bag. In a large gap you can get all the way back to your bag & wrassle it down then head forward again without obstructing anyone aft of you; the other idjit is “helpfully” blocking all the traffic for you. This isn’t hard. It feels like an eternity, but rarely takes more than a minute or two to accomplish.
It takes about 15 minutes from seat belt sign off until the last row ~30 gets off the typical 737/A320 domestic airliner. It just does. That’s still ~12 people per minute or one every 5 seconds.
As to why people leave their bags forward & sit aft:
They think it’s convenient not to drag them the length of the plane banging on all the seats along the way. Or it’s a backpack and they want to unburden themselves sooner, not later. Somebody who’s managed to bring an extra illicit item on board likes to get rid of one early before being caught. Or, by putting their second “underseat” bag in the overhead forward, they’ll avoid having it underfoot while somebody else pays the price for their selfishness. And when the FA finds the smaller bag and asks the people sitting nearby whose it is, nobody will answer and there it’ll stay. Meanwhile they’re out of earshot, so don’t have to suffer the indignity of knowing they’re being called out. That erases their guilt. In their mind, if not in fact.
Last of all, it seems quicker (for them and only them) to deboard that way. As soon as the crowd in the aisle forward clears up, just stand up and start walking while everyone around you is wrassling with the overhead bins. You’re unburdened so can walk quickly. Then grab your bag from row 6 or 10 or wherever where the bin has helpfully already been emptied of all the other luggage by other people, then walk the few short feet to the front door and you’re gone. Easy & relatively effortless. Shame about what it does to everybody else.
If your bag(s) are forward, and you get an aisle seat, and are reasonably spry, then the instant the airplane stops moving, jump up & fast-walk forward while the aisle is still clear. You can find yourself 10 or more rows forward of your seat before the aisle clots as the seatbelt sign goes off and everyone else stands. Now you’re that much closer to retrieving your bags. Yaay you; you Beat the System.
I get to see a lot of tricks. All of them selfish. Some dangerous to others.
It is a minority who do it. Maybe 15%, not the 100% my earlier post implied for expository simplicity. But it causes an outsized amount of hassle by forcing 15% of the other passengers to backtrack in the aisle.
We start boarding according to a schedule worked out by a lot of practical experience. Which is padded a few extra minutes to allow for this kind of stuff that goes on every time. We’d all rather start boarding later, do it more quickly and efficiently, then be on our way. Chaos is unhelpful to everyone’s mental state. And the wasted time costs money, which is what the airline really cares about.
I would have guessed fewer. But yeah, i can see that even a few people who stow their bag significantly aft of where they sit create problems on a full flight.
Huh. I would have thought that would take considerably more than a minute. I guess if i ever get stuck with baggage too far back of me I’ll try it. I’ve had good luck with the “kindness of strangers” approach, fwiw. My experience deboarding is that the vast majority of fellow passengers are helpful. Everyone wants to get off as smoothly as possible.
Aft? Did you mean forward?
Oops, yes.
(Some) People boarding toward the last half of the passenger contingent also will scan the bins as they go by and grab an available one well ahead of their seat, rather than hope that the people seated around them already have left enough space in the adjacent bins. This means late boarders seated near the front don’t have bin space.
Then there’s the flight attendants trying to close the overhead bins, and forced to shuffle and to relocate stuff because the “carry-ons” are far too large. It was especially galling when our expensive Briggs and Riley carryon was deemed too large by the checkin attendant for being an inch too thick in the reduced-size frame Air Canada use, while we see plenty of others with much larger carry-ons causing this bin-packing issue.
TSA regs don’t let you then throw that shit off the plane? Added bonus is that when they stand up to object, you can throw their ass off, too.
How about this: When boarding group three (at the end of the plane), the flight attendants only open the overhead baggage doors for that group. They are told to put their baggage in an open door closest to their seat. Then the group 2 baggage doors are opened, then group 1. People could still put their bags a few rows away from them, but you could stop people from dropping their bags at the front and walking to the rear.
Or, you could arm the flight attendants with tasers. A couple of good tasings latter, and the passengers will be more reasonable.
You’ve obviously never flown in or out of one of the smaller airports already mentioned, many of which are served primarily by puddle jumpers. I recently flew from Wichita to Denver on one of these planes, and we boarded in Wichita via the tarmac, and deplaned in Denver via the same method.
Is it too much of a hijack to ask, why don’t boarding crew enforce the carryon size restrictions? And, if they aren’t going to enforce them, why have those little measuring devices around?
The size restrictions are supposed to be enforced by the gate agents. They are the ones capable of generating baggage tags for oversized carryons or for people trying to carry on too many items.
Sadly, those folks are under intense time pressure and often believe they simply can’t both complete boarding timely and enforce baggage rules. Their local boss wants on-time more than he/she cares about the mess on the plane. Gate agents are also responsible for preventing drunks getting on board, folks with severe hygiene problems, and folks with inappropriate attire (usually racist or foul-language slogans, obscene gestures, etc.)
By the time the offending person is on the airplane and encounters the very first FA it’s very difficult to get them, and their excess luggage back off the plane without creating even more disruption.
At my employer we do station one FA right at the boarding door. Whose overt mission is to welcome folks aboard. But whose covert mission is to turn back anyone with “no hope” luggage, appears drunk, etc.
Friction between FA’s and gate agents is severe on the point of whose job it is to stop bad boarders. The book is clear: gate agent. The practical practice at every airline I’ve worked for is that most agents stop some on a good day, but far too many bad situations leak through to the FA’s far too often. Who are also under time pressure to just get the people seated and bins closed so we can go.
It’s a dumb system overall, and made worse by the fact it’s all a matter of federal law that must be enforced by people who aren’t professional police; they’re corporate customer service workers.
Speaking of passengers not bothering to follow any “rules” regarding putting things in the overhead bins, I once saw someone put his rolling bag sideways (instead of wheels-first) in a bin, then close the door so no one else would think of defiling his precious bag by putting anything else in the bin with it. I don’t know if a FA ever checked the bin trying to find room, as I couldn’t see it from my seat.
I’ve seen this a couple of times as well. Didn’t work either time, as somebody looking for room opened the bin.
Did not want to go longer without expressing my appreciation for such a clear-eyed statement of what is happening.
Hence the very common call-out some time before the boarding to the effect of “anyone with a very large carry-on may come to the podium and we’ll be glad to put a check tag on it”.
In at least one carrier I’ve been on lately they’ve just gone right ahead to say “if your boarding pass says Group E or F, you only get to board with your “personal item”, we will gatecheck your larger carry-on free.”
Also I’ve notived that a lot of top rollaboards are spec’ed on paper at exactly the nominal maximum, but IRL when you add handles and wheels they blow right though that. Me, I took to using a backpack or trifold garment bag type carry-on back like circa 2009. Gate and plane agents are a lot more tolerant of a soft bag you can squish to fit rather than do Tetris with the currently popular rigid rolling boxes.
Of course, and we’re going into “and monkeys could fly out my butt” territory here… the airlines could bring back free, or low nominal price, first piece of checked luggage… 
oh man I crack myself up…