I have not seen the boarding card numbers adhered to on Ryanair or Easyjet for some years either, other than a token attempt by announcing the groups in order, but no actually sending early people back.
Did see a woman at Graz in Austria proudly and loudly announcing to her partner how she was going to be first on the aircraft and get the pick of the seats, due to her having boarding cards in the first group and her being stood first in the queue. How everyone laughed when it turned out to be a bus to the aircraft, and because she'd boarded the bus first, ended up being last off it, with virtually the entire plane loaded ahead of her. She went into one hell of a strop!
