INCENTIVES MATTER. Check your bag at the check-in desk, and airlines charge you a fee. Get caught at the gate with an overly-large bag, or get preempted by the gate lice, and your bag goes fee-free.

Bags deemed too large at the boarding gate, or checked when there's no room on the plane, fly free — a fact that has not escaped a growing number of travelers.

"Gate-checked bags are usually the last ones loaded into the baggage compartment, the first ones out, and generally the first ones on the (baggage) carousel," flier [David] Brown complains. "There should be an inconvenience penalty for gate-checked bags."

Just one more small advantage for the passenger train, if the airlines impose that. You have all the passengers attempting to board through one door, you have the first- and business-class passengers blocking the aisles and downing their drinks, then you have the attempt to find stowage space for carry-ons. Now add to that the purser collecting penalty fees.

Those bags with handles and rollers delay proceedings further, as passengers insist on rolling them on board (occupying more space) and then stowing the handles before stowing the bags, if space is available. Oh, for the days when John T. Molloy's success advice included not using such luggage, as it was a symbol of a flight attendant or some other plebeian calling.

The article hit a nerve with some readers.

As frustrating as it is to try to stuff bags in the overhead compartments, it is equally frustrating to wait for passengers to retrieve their luggage from the bins after the flight has landed.

Passengers who have not used the overhead bins should be allowed to exit the plane first, especially when they have a connecting flight. For passengers sitting in the back of the plane, exiting can take a half-hour or more.

You've got to cruise a lot of miles at 500 mph to offset the 75 minutes to two hours passengers lose in what the airlines call "boarding process" (felicitously conjuring images of processed meat) at one end and unloading through that one door at the other end.