Originally Posted by e6bpilot

100 percent. The pre board scam was the death blow to open boarding. It took a while for it to really gain momentum, but it's gotten ridicuous. Now customers buy early bird, get a low A, and watch 20 people get on the plane before boarding even starts and snag a good seat for free. Also the new airline consumer protection rules are supposed to have rules about sitting with children, which I totally agree with. No matter your boarding group or when you arrive, you should be able to sit with your children, not have to sit in totally different parts of the plane with strangers. At stations like MCO, family boarding, which now goes before A list customers, is huge. It also doesn't include 7-12 year old kids, which should still be sitting with you.
Pure open boarding "cattle call" has run its course. Selling classes of tickets that allow you to pick seats and allowing them to go first and then allowing others to self assign closer to the flight or the computer will assign them and they board last would be my guess. Preboards will have to sit in whatever seat they bought and get off the airplane when it is their turn. There will be a lot of moaning from customers who genuinely need preboard and like our friendly rules, but they can blame the liars and abusers for ruining it.
A scenario like this would generate a lot of extra income and make at least some of the people happy.
Another idea is on full flights to give the first 20 people who check carry on bags with customer service their choice of a drink ticket or upgraded boarding. This would prevent the 30 minute delay that ensues when there are a stack of bags sitting in the jet bridge waiting to get scanned followed by FAs trying to figure out who checked them.