[dominicgs]

Absolutely, the article presents the problem as trying to minimise the time that an individual wastes in a queue, not the problem of processing all of the people in the shortest time possible.

In the airline example, the airline wants passengers to be at the gate before they begin boarding so that they can start looking for missing passengers as early as possible. I think we see this technique most often used by low cost carriers, and this is one of the many ways that they are able to turn aircraft around so quickly.