> “This spring, Lufthansa announced that it boarded an A380 with over 350 passengers at LAX in less than 20 minutes—less than half of their normal time—using self-boarding gates linked to CBP’s facial-enabled traveler verification service,” McAleenan said.
This smells of a staged PR stunt. Or, maybe "boarded" means people were all through the gate, but not necessarily on the plane?
That last has to be it. Every flight I've ever boarded has been bottlenecked at the jetway by people getting themselves and their carryons loaded and situated, not the speed of scanning the boarding document.
At best, it means they boarded an A380 through multiple doors in parallel instead of all through a single scanning location. This only matters for planes big enough to have multiple entrances.
They always board A380s through multiple doors. But they probably had a flight full of Germans - Americans tend to take a lot longer to get themselves sat down than most Europeans do, and spend a lot more time faffing around with their bag and belongings while blocking the aisle.
The Japanese are still the most efficient at boarding though.
There's also the difference of airlines. Airlines that charge extra for checked bags will have more people messing about trying to fit in a carryon, not finding room, etc. And U.S. carriers tend to have some of the worst policies. (in other places LCCs have the same policies but they also tend to have smaller planes)
This smells of a staged PR stunt. Or, maybe "boarded" means people were all through the gate, but not necessarily on the plane?