On most flights within the Schengen area your boarding pass is no more manually checked. That's unless you fly business or are a high value status customer.
Instead you just scan your boarding pass / smart phone yourself.
I can't imagine that this is in any way slower than a face scan.
I thought airlines or airports were required to check your identity to endure that the checked in luggages fly along the passenger who checked them in, in case there is a bomb or something. Granted this rule is a bit absurd in a world where most terrorist attacks are suicide attacks.
Certainly when a borading pass, matched to a passenger who checked in luggage, is not used for boarding the luggage will be unloaded.
Identity check really depends on the airport and airline. Sometimes your identity is checked when you enter the secure area, sometimes at the gate and sometimes not all.
Even at airports that don't check identities airlines - notably budget airlines - may check id at the gate.
It may also happen that id is (spot) checked upon exiting the plane, but this is very rare.
That's only applicable for flights within the Schengen area. Passport checks upon leaving or entering the Schengen area are pretty strict. Essentially every piece of id is checked towards the SIS[1]. But within Schengen and depending on the airport there may be no checks at all.
I fly from Schiphol with great regularity and my boarding pass is definitely checked every time by a person (as is my passport) right before boarding the plane. Usually the same happens on the return leg, and the majority of my trips are within Schengen.
I'm actually surprised that Schiphol does that. My informal survey indicates that ex-Eastern European countries tend to check more as do the French.
In Zurich your id is virtually never checked on Schengen flights. Last time I flew through Vienna security wanted to see the boarding pass, but not the ID. Dusseldorf also didn't check when I flew through it last (alas, a few years ago).
I know at the Oslo airport it's fairly common to never show ID or your boarding pass to a person if you're flying within Schengen. --Check in at the automated kiosk, put on your own luggage tag, scan the tag at the bag drop, and you're done there. Passing through security means scanning your boarding pass rather than showing it to someone most of the time, and finally many of the gates have automated doors where you scan your boarding pass again to board the plane. The same applies to other Scandinavian airports as well.
From Schiphol on Schengen flights frequently (~50% of the time) no one checks anything in my experience outside of scanning the QR to get into security, and into the plance.
Instead you just scan your boarding pass / smart phone yourself.
I can't imagine that this is in any way slower than a face scan.