[ruh-roh]

I used to travel ...a lot... Minimum twice a week, usually 4+. As an engineer (and process consultant), I spent countless hours sitting at airport gates looking for any optimization I could find, mostly focusing on wasteful and (seemingly expensive) boarding processes.

My favorite half-baked + stupid + fun one: Install the plane seating area at the gate itself, as a separate detached entity on a conveyor belt. Passengers can take their time, it's open, there aren't walls. You can just walk right into Row 20, seat A. No squeezing down aisles. Once everyone arrives and takes their seat, the belt moves and shuttles the seats+passengers into the fuselage. Kinda like a mini-roller coaster. Shut doors. Take off. Repeat in reverse after landing.

(There are obviously serious problems with this. You'd have to redesign planes and gates, at a minimum.)