Are there any advantages to boarding a flight near the end of the boarding process?

Ignoring the fact that most airlines make certain people wait until the (near) end based on boarding order, etc...

Planes are small, cramped things, and many people simply don't like sitting on them for a minute longer than they need to. Boarding an extra 5 minutes later means 5 minutes sitting in the more comfortable (!?) seats in the boarding area, in the food court or at the bar, rather than on the plane.

If you're on an aisle seat, boarding later can also mean that you won't need to repeatedly stand up if the people in the window/middle seats arrive after you do, or if they decide they need to get at their bags in the overhead bins, etc.

Depending on the country, the airline and the flight, boarding late can mean difficulty in finding space for your luggage, but for many people that travel with only a single bag that can fit under the seat in front of them, that is not an issue - in fact, if you don't have a bag that needs the overhead bin space then there's not really a lot of point boarding early!

On RyanAir, there's a sort-of gamble you can take.

Generally, there's no seating assignment, AND they rope off the front 2-3 rows. So about 25 minutes before boarding, everyone is eyeing each other and suddenly someone steps up to queue, and so does half the plane. Everyone wants to be first on to either a) sit with their friends or b) get a window seat (or both). So much so that you can pay for priority boarding (or speedy boarding with EasyJet).

However, I've often been one of the last to board, and at this point, they un-rope off the first rows. It seems to be a speeding-up-the-boarding process thing, whereby there are passengers milling about in the aisle, putting luggage in the racks and so on, and this way rather than have the last few passengers trying to get past to some random seats dotted around, they just let you sit down immediately in these front rows.

The bonus? If you're in row 1 - massive leg room, and if you're in any of these front few rows, you're going to be one of the first off the plane - often a handy advantage for beating the immigration queues or taxi lines upon landing.

When I am travelling, and especially if I do not have to stack much in the bins, I often wait a bit to board late, even though I am already at the gate, for several reasons.

1. Planes are not comfortable. I am tall for international standards, and the seats at the gate are far more relaxed than the plane seats.

2. People taking their time to stack there stuff in the overhead bins annoy me. Boarding could be so much more efficient (like entering/exiting the train).

3. The time goes quicker outside of the plane :)

One of the main reasons I wait is because I am hoping for an upgrade. Until the flight "closes", the gate staff don't know how many upgrades they have to give away. All that unpacking and settling in will be wasted if you're going to move up front.

The other reason I might be one of the last to board is that I have been waiting in the airline lounge rather than at the gate. If you time it well the boarding line has died down as has the line in the jetway, and the whole thing is nearly pleasant. Occasionally if I arrive and see a giant line to board, and presumably a giant line in the jetway, I will sit in the gate area and take advantage of "power and ping" for a few more minutes. And once I waited till the very last second to board a flight that I knew had no inseat power because I had made a connection and landed with all my devices out of power, and sat at the gate charging everything until the gate agents told me I could wait no longer and I finally boarded.

Finally some people are last to board because they came from another flight or had to clear standby or whatnot. Or they just came to the airport late. I know a guy who likes to say "if you don't miss one flight a year, you're spending too much time in airports."

Not only must there be someone at the end, there can only be one person going first and a handful who don't experience queuing in any serious way. The rest is going to stand in the queue no matter what.

Consequently, for those of us who don't have status or aren't generally so quick that we find ourselves boarding immediately, the choice is not between being first and waiting. Realistically, it's between, on the one hand, rushing only to find oneself slightly ahead in the queue and standing anyway and, on the other hand, waiting in your airport seat while the most pushy people fight each other for no reason and boarding comfortably afterward.

This is especially bad with budget airlines, even when they assign seats, and some people might have got used to avoid boarding immediately and then carry that habit over to long-haul flights with legacy carriers.

Seen that way, the question could also be why do people bother with trying to board early at all? The answer, for me at least, is that there is still a bit of excitement and anxiety to miss the plane and that I find it difficult to just stay seated and focus on something else until the very end of the procedure.

I sometimes board near the end, even if I'm sitting next to the gate, simply to avoid having to stand in queue. I see it as "free priority boarding", where I define priority in terms of time spent standing in queue, not time at which aircraft is entered.

This strategy is sometimes thwarted by the presence of a second queue in the aerobridge.

For me I wait till the very very end so that ideally I'm one of the very last passengers who haven't boarded (and often they have to pester me to board because I'm just sitting near the gate, while everyone else has boarded).

This way I can just walk straight in all the way and be seated in the plane, without having to stop for a moment in some painful queue. (I dislike queuing and would rather be doing just about anything else, such as simply sitting down near the gate.)