As a layman, won't the loading of, say, 100 cases at the gate cause significant delays? Also, I assume the ground handling agents will require additional payment for this additional workload?
Indeed. That was the thinking behind RYR's baggage charge. They sold it on the basis that people with no baggage should not subsidise those who do. RYR has to pay a loading crew. Do they pay per bag? No idea. A loading crew is a loading crew. That's one reason they only load in 1 hold = 1 crew and faster. This then created a pax seating problem whereby they had herded you all into the middle on low load flights: balance.
RYR then teamed up with Samsonite to design a RYR size cabin bag, so as to further reduce loading crew costs, only to find that 140 was the max the hatbins would carry. So baggage was off-loaded. But RYR sold the deal of remote airports & hand baggage on the basis of no waiting at destination for bags. Now they fly to BIG airports where baggage can take 30-45 minutes to arrive, and your hand baggage is taken off you. It might be free, but you'll still have to wait. It would seem the only way to keep control of the situation is to allow only quite small hand-baggage and everything else is in the hold. That way the pax know exactly where they stand; waiting for bags, or not, and planning knows how many hold bags are coming at them.