Boarding by seat row
I recently flew out of Bristol on SleazyJet. It was raining heavily and blowing a gale. For some reason there was only one set of steps at the front. They boarded "Speedy Boarding" passengers first and they generally sit up front. Then started boarding all the rest of us, resulting in most of us getting soaked through standing on the apron or stairs while the first people on board stood around getting their bags in the overhead lockers etc.
I get why Speedy Boarding were boarded first - they paid for it, but why not board the rest by seat row to minimise the time in the rain?
When I was a despatcher (1980s) we used to board by seat row (30-27, 26-24 etc ) so the people with seats down the back didn't block everyone else. This was both to speed up the boarding and get the thing out on time and, if the weather was bad, to stop all the SLF getting wetter than they needed to be.
Question: Have despatchers/passenger handling forgotten this trick?
Question 2: Why in Britain do we have open stairs when it rains so often? I get that the low-cost airlines won't pay for jetways (and Bristol doesn't have any to my knowledge), but I have seen aircraft steps with covers.