Boarding a flight in Taoyuan International Airport (Taipei) made the most sense. We had to change planes there for Bangkok. 747 as I recall. I forget the airline but the instructions were basically "OK, you can board now". I think the folks with seats on the upper level got to board first, but after that it was basically get in the boarding lines and get on the airplane. Surprisingly little confusion and people were polite, plus it took only 15-20 minutes to board the entire airplane. Of course it is a different culture and probably wouldn't work over here.
Some airlines do tend to over-complicate things though: One of the worst: flying Frontier from Orlando to Las Vegas. Frontier charges for "personal bags" if over a certain size so there was this line with people holding bags waiting to be cleared for boarding by the Bag Nazi, a ponderous woman with a face like a bulldog. Definitely not someone to mess with. Each person had to put their bag in a wooden box. If it fit (nothing beyond the top or beyond the cutouts in each end of the box) you could board. Otherwise you were sent to another counter for all to see, to stand in a very slow line waiting to pay (as I recall) $99 for the privilege of taking your bag onto the airplane. There was also a board with a big message sort of along the lines of "please DO NOT cause delays by trying to get an oversize bag onto the flight" or words to that effect. Public shaming. Sort of like a penalty box in hockey. It was a zoo: I've never seen such confusion boarding an airplane.
Never again.
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