> Virgin America, which sells early boarding as part of a perks package to customers who buy seats with extra legroom, experimented with giving early boarding t

> Virgin America, which sells early boarding as part of a perks package to customers who buy seats with extra legroom, experimented with giving early boarding to passengers who didn't bring large bags on board. That showed promise for speeding up boarding, but because it was unfamiliar to customers; it slowed down some people and offset gains, a spokeswoman said. This bothers me to no end. I fly Virgin 1-2x roundtrips a month, and I've seen this program put into place very erratically. If they wanted to see results, they should have offered that on all flights for a certain period of time, instead of only here and there and mentioning it only once after boarding priority. A lot of the time, it was only mentioned when they wanted people on a full flight to gate check their carryons, and then they forgot to mention it again before boarding the first group (after priority/families/special needs) at all. The other half of the problem was that some people decided that "one carryon that goes under the seat in front of you" meant 1 personal item plus 1 carryon (e.g. your usual limitation). So you basically had like 5-6 idiots with the largest carryon bags possible and a ginormous purse or shopping bag getting into the line with the people with only one backpack or carrying a laptop sleeve, and these weren't people with priority boarding or special needs. The Virgin employees never said anything to them, if they even noticed the extra bags. I wonder why it offset gains, I really do.