Qantas plans to halve check-in times

[Gareth U]

737-800 isn't quite so bad as there are less people on it.

As someone who works on both aircraft types, let me assure you that the 737-800 is far worse in terms of queues and wait times for boarding and disembarkation. There is only one aisle and only one less seat per row.

Oddly the flights with a significant amount of business flyers such as the 6am or 6pm flights are very quick to board and deplane.

I have found these are the people who bring on ridiculous amounts of hand luggage or refuse to place any items under their seat (however small), placing more pressure on the locker space. These flights are by far the most stressful to board, from a flight attendant perspective. These 'business' people seem to lose the ability to look for any room other than above their own seat and leave bags in the aisle for cabin crew to stow themselves (including a certain MP who is known to say there is no room even before she turns down the aisle and leaves her bag at the front door).

The only practical advice which would assist is if QF started to enforce carry on limits to the published limits.

Flights would be severely delayed if that were to happen. I am not being cynical - it's the truth. Recently one of the two boarding flight attendants made customers weigh their bags using the scales on the test unit and 28 bags were over the limit. That's one flight attendant on one flight.

Most of the time hand luggage removed from the cabin during boarding does not make the flight and travels on a subsequent service - further delaying the customer. Eight excess cabin bags recently caused an 18 minute delay.

At what point does it come down to customers to obey limits and regulations and to consider people other than themselves?