https://kdvr.com/news/united-airlines-is-about-to-completely-change-the-way-you-board-a-plane/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR2QOjQCB_Ndzr5SYnBSTIeCMSSVYRjfmJF_S-YX0B6zFNY30X38mqOsZ-Q

Per the article, and mythbusters, this should save a bit over 2 min.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mythbusters-airlines-are-boarding-their-planes-all-wrong-2014-9

Wow

schmendeler said:

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Also by charging for checked bags they created an incentive to bring a carry on which makes everything slower.

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you only get one carry on free.

Card holders get free checked bags. I get 2 plus 2 for companion with my card.

You can fit a lot in a carry-on plus personal item. Airlines have also incentivized skipping checked bags by being so bad at getting your bag to your destination and getting it on the carousel in a reasonable amount of time.

I have a personal stance to not help anyone lift their bag into the overhead bin. If you can't lift your bag over your head then you should have checked it. Sorry, Grandma.

Captain Winky said:

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You can fit a lot in a carry-on plus personal item. Airlines have also incentivized skipping checked bags by being so bad at getting your bag to your destination and getting it on the carousel in a reasonable amount of time.

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It does seem odd when you think about how they take the bags from the plane, where all the passengers are, and send them off a mile away through belts and and automation forcing the customer to go wherever that is and wait for it, and they come out completely random.

All airlines (except for SW) know where everyone is sitting, so they know the order in which they deboard the plane (within 3 people or so, since left/right isn't really forced), which means they can put those bags roughly in that order when loaded.
With this in place, it seems the whole process could be re-imagined to have the passengers get their bags when they get off the plane, in or just outside the jetway.

If this happened, way more people would check their smaller bags. I know I would. I don't because I don't like waiting for it, and chance it gets lost.

62strat said:

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Captain Winky said:

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You can fit a lot in a carry-on plus personal item. Airlines have also incentivized skipping checked bags by being so bad at getting your bag to your destination and getting it on the carousel in a reasonable amount of time.

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It does seem odd when you think about how they take the bags from the plane, where all the passengers are, and send them off a mile away through belts and and automation forcing the customer to go wherever that is and wait for it, and they come out completely random.

All airlines (except for SW) know where everyone is sitting, so they know the order in which they deboard the plane (within 3 people or so, since left/right isn't really forced), which means they can put those bags roughly in that order when loaded.
With this in place, it seems the whole process could be re-imagined to have the passengers get their bags when they get off the plane, in or just outside the jetway.

If this happened, way more people would check their smaller bags. I know I would. I don't because I don't like waiting for it, and chance it gets lost.

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With the skill level of employees doing the work. Connections all over the place, this would take forever to sort. Any solution to do what you say would cost way too much to implement.


This loading is also going to be a **** show

You are basically asking anyone not traveling solo to board the plane without the people they are traveling with. I wouldn't care, but most people are not going to want to do this. They will try to board together anyway and the gate agents will spend half their time turning people away, telling them to wait for their group.

And this plan will do nothing to stop the idiots that can't find their seat, won't sit down, take forever to put their bags away, etc.

schmendeler said:

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Also by charging for checked bags they created an incentive to bring a carry on which makes everything slower.

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This! They have made things endlessly complicated and slowed down security lines and their boarding process immensely by charging people to check their bags. Then they work themselves into a tizzy trying to do gate checking of bags, dictating which passengers can or can't bring them, etc. It is all a huge headache they caused by not just raising ticket prices a few bucks to cover the checked bag costs.

txags92 said:

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schmendeler said:

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Also by charging for checked bags they created an incentive to bring a carry on which makes everything slower.

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This! They have made things endlessly complicated and slowed down security lines and their boarding process immensely by charging people to check their bags. Then they work themselves into a tizzy trying to do gate checking of bags, dictating which passengers can or can't bring them, etc. It is all a huge headache they caused by not just raising ticket prices a few bucks to cover the checked bag costs.

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I don't know about others, but united has checked bags included for the economy fare. But not too many years ago they started offering the 'basic economy' bones fare which comes with no free seat or bag, presumably in an effort to compete with spirit and frontier.

No. United charges $35 for a checked bag in standard economy. In basic economy you don't even get a full-sized carry on.

62strat said:

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txags92 said:

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schmendeler said:

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Also by charging for checked bags they created an incentive to bring a carry on which makes everything slower.

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This! They have made things endlessly complicated and slowed down security lines and their boarding process immensely by charging people to check their bags. Then they work themselves into a tizzy trying to do gate checking of bags, dictating which passengers can or can't bring them, etc. It is all a huge headache they caused by not just raising ticket prices a few bucks to cover the checked bag costs.

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I don't know about others, but united has checked bags included for the economy fare. But not too many years ago they started offering the 'basic economy' bones fare which comes with no free seat or bag, presumably in an effort to compete with spirit and frontier.

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Unless you have some special status or are one of their CC holders, that is not true. Are you thinking of Carryon bags? Which are free for economy, but cost money on basic economy? The standard fee is $35 for the first checked bag and $45 for the 2nd on United for an economy fare. Charging people for those checked bags causes them to tryt o bring everything on the plane instead. Which slows down security screening check points, it slows down boarding as people try to stuff them into the overhead bins, it causes FAs to have to take bags off to gate check them, etc. It is all a headache of the airlines' making because they didn't want to just include the cost of handling the bags in peoples' tickets. They thought charging for checked bags would decrease what people took with them on flights, reducing their fuel costs. But instead, people just bring it all into the cabin with them, so they have the same fuel bill, but a slower boarding process.

ok yeh maybe I'm wrong, I've never flown united without a chase united card of some sort, so I guess I never paid much attention to what the charges are.

TXCityAggie said:

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You are basically asking anyone not traveling solo to board the plane without the people they are traveling with. I wouldn't care, but most people are not going to want to do this. They will try to board together anyway and the gate agents will spend half their time turning people away, telling them to wait for their group.

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I'm not sure that's going to be an issue.

From the article:

Quote:

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Customers traveling in groups on the same economy reservation will be assigned the same boarding group based on the "highest applicable boarding group," according to the memo.

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Makes it sound like they'll be grouped together.

Jackal99 said:

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TXCityAggie said:

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You are basically asking anyone not traveling solo to board the plane without the people they are traveling with. I wouldn't care, but most people are not going to want to do this. They will try to board together anyway and the gate agents will spend half their time turning people away, telling them to wait for their group.

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I'm not sure that's going to be an issue.

From the article:

Quote:

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Customers traveling in groups on the same economy reservation will be assigned the same boarding group based on the "highest applicable boarding group," according to the memo.

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Makes it sound like they'll be grouped together.

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correct.

So a window and middle couple would board with the middle seat group, which is after the solo window group.

Between this and priority board 80% of the plane won't follow the method anyway.

Quote:

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All airlines (except for SW) know where everyone is sitting, so they know the order in which they deboard the plane (within 3 people or so, since left/right isn't really forced), which means they can put those bags roughly in that order when loaded. With this in place, it seems the whole process could be re-imagined to have the passengers get their bags when they get off the plane, in or just outside the jetway.

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Its not that simple. Bags are far from the only thing that get placed underneath. Wheel chairs, motor scooters, cargo, company materials (big and small), coffins. It all comes down to weight and balance so the plane stays level both on the ground and in flight. My wife is currently rewriting training techniques for SWA on how this is taught right now. Its actually oddly specific where and how they stack things underneath.

This would probably work really well in places with civilized, considerate people. Not sure if any regular commercial flight in the US fits that criteria.

62strat said:

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Captain Winky said:

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You can fit a lot in a carry-on plus personal item. Airlines have also incentivized skipping checked bags by being so bad at getting your bag to your destination and getting it on the carousel in a reasonable amount of time.

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It does seem odd when you think about how they take the bags from the plane, where all the passengers are, and send them off a mile away through belts and and automation forcing the customer to go wherever that is and wait for it, and they come out completely random.

All airlines (except for SW) know where everyone is sitting, so they know the order in which they deboard the plane (within 3 people or so, since left/right isn't really forced), which means they can put those bags roughly in that order when loaded.

With this in place, it seems the whole process could be re-imagined to have the passengers get their bags when they get off the plane, in or just outside the jetway.

If this happened, way more people would check their smaller bags. I know I would. I don't because I don't like waiting for it, and chance it gets lost.

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Bag intake and sortation is wholly separate from the airline and is not at all aligned with how passengers are boarded and where they are seated. You are talking about a highly sophisticated system and process that would need to be engineered and then aligned between every airline and the airport bag system to make this work.

I'm not saying it can't be done but that is a damn complex problem to solve. In addition, you have different aircraft types with different bins and then you have cargo mixed in with passenger bags. And then you have to factor that some type of cargo requires certain bins and can't have passenger bags near it or on top of it.

All kinds of complexities here that make this highly complex.

Honestly I thought they did this already.. Im in Group 1 so never paid that much attention but I remember thinking one time it seemed Group 3 was window, group 4 was middle and group 5 was aisle…

I think they basically already did with group 3 and 4. This just expands it by creating a third group to separate window, aisle, and middle into distinctive groups. 3 was window and 4 was middle / aisle in the past.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/united-airlines-new-boarding-process-window-middle-aisle/

In hubs like IAH or DEN this will make zero difference as 75% of plane is 1 or 2…. So nothing changes other than I guess if you are in the latter groups in an aisle you have even less access to overhead space, but that usually was already full anyways.

I used to fly solely SWA because we lived right by Love Field but now that we have moved and business travel takes me places SWA doesn't fly I've hit a few other airlines.

One thing that seems to have helped, and would be curious see any data on it, is with these bigger overhead bins you can place bags on their side vs flat. This creates a lot more room and should reduce the number of people near the end of boarding who end up hunting for bin space. AA actually has instruction graphics on the inside of the bins telling you how to place the bag which I think is a good thing considering the general stupidity of our populace.

However, with SWA they do not push this method on their 800s that have larger bin sizes. If anything, its an obvious improvement to the customer experience and should be encouraged.

They put instructions and people still f it up. It's almost comical.

yeh my united flights last week, they said over and over again on the intercom 'please put your bags on their side, not flat, we can fit a lot more bags'

Seems people got the message, we were last to board on both flights (we prefer to relax in the club and show up before the door closes), and nearly every bin door was still open. Tons of room.

It says image unavailable.

the only concern i would have about this, if your party is broken up into multiple groups... in the past, on an over booked flight, I saw them draw the line based on the boarding group for who made the flight and who didn't.

rebelag62 said:

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Can't fix stupid people, they'll always be a big part of the problem. Offer a free checked bag for everyone. Charge for a carry on for anything larger than a backpack; except for the first two boarding groups. Boom most boarding issues solved.

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This is really the way to fix boarding, but over the years the airlines have screwed so many people with lost bags that half the poeple who travel more than 6-8 times a year have a phobia of checking. I almost always check my bag with United and have rarely had an issue in the last 20 years. However, my boss has an almost irrational fear of every handing her bag to anyone. She also falls under the category below.

We have also become conditioned to always be in a hurry when traveling. I personally do not understand why so many people can't stand to wait 5-10 minutes for their bag at a carousel. I guess I'm just a more patient person than most. More often than not that time has allowed me to cycle through the Avis upgrades and find a better vehicle.

I think this change United is making won't have a ton of impact on boarding times, but at the same time it probably won't hurt to try either. The most frustrating part about the current boarding process right now is people's inability to understand that the ****ing plane isnt going to leave without you, along with the fact no one talks to one another anymore.

Thankfully I dont travel a lot and am a lowly silver status so always in Group 2. I can't tell you how many times I've walked up to the gate, especially at DEN & IAH, to get in line 2 only to ask 12 people standing in that "line" and find out they are 3-5. I call it the "blob". Everyone is in such a hurry that they have to congregate around the Group 1-2 line and just clog everything up.

Earlier this year i had an incident with united that will prevent me from checking unless I have to.

On a flight from Frankfurt to Houston, I checked my bag as I had several bottles of wine I shoved in it. Got all the way to the gate, everything going as planned. Then the flight had a slight delay that spiraled into it being canceled after several hours of delays. The next flight out was in 2 days.

When it was cancelled, we were told at the gate that we could go to the baggage office and ask them to call to the back to get our bag. When we arrived at the baggage office they refused to do so and would not make the call.

After explaining it would be several days till our next flight and we needed items in our bag, they then pretended to look in the system and claim that our bag never made it to Frankfurt. This was a lie as proven by my air tag.

They then made a call to the back and said it would be 4 hours or so.... we then waited in baggage claim... after 4 hours no bag... and went back and they shrugged it off. We left frustrated and tried again the next day (had to figure out how to get back into customs area where baggage was). The next day we had the same person working who went through the same arguments step by step as if they had amnesia...

It wasn't until we did a third trip back to the airport that we were able to retrieve our bag.

After this experience, I will always have a carryon and will only check additional bags.

So, I was on a flight yesterday with the new system supposedly in place…and I didn't notice any significant difference. I had a window seat, but the person sitting in the aisle seat must have been group 2 because he was already there and had to get up to let me in…just the same as before. There was also the usual gumming up when the overhead bin space ran out.

There are too many exceptions put into place for it to be effective in my opinion.

NColoradoAG said:

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rebelag62 said:

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Can't fix stupid people, they'll always be a big part of the problem. Offer a free checked bag for everyone. Charge for a carry on for anything larger than a backpack; except for the first two boarding groups. Boom most boarding issues solved.

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This is really the way to fix boarding, but over the years the airlines have screwed so many people with lost bags that half the poeple who travel more than 6-8 times a year have a phobia of checking. I almost always check my bag with United and have rarely had an issue in the last 20 years. However, my boss has an almost irrational fear of every handing her bag to anyone. She also falls under the category below.

We have also become conditioned to always be in a hurry when traveling. I personally do not understand why so many people can't stand to wait 5-10 minutes for their bag at a carousel. I guess I'm just a more patient person than most. More often than not that time has allowed me to cycle through the Avis upgrades and find a better vehicle.

I think this change United is making won't have a ton of impact on boarding times, but at the same time it probably won't hurt to try either. The most frustrating part about the current boarding process right now is people's inability to understand that the ****ing plane isnt going to leave without you, along with the fact no one talks to one another anymore.

Thankfully I dont travel a lot and am a lowly silver status so always in Group 2. I can't tell you how many times I've walked up to the gate, especially at DEN & IAH, to get in line 2 only to ask 12 people standing in that "line" and find out they are 3-5. I call it the "blob". Everyone is in such a hurry that they have to congregate around the Group 1-2 line and just clog everything up.

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This is why I always laugh at people's derision about SWA's boarding process. It's more organized than everyone else and alleviates this behavior. I've flown AA a bit lately and this "blob" boarding process, as you so aptly named it, is frustrating and exacerbates the worst in people.

Now, once you get on the plane, the AA experience is much better IMO. Can charge my devices at seat, snacks are better, seats are better, and WiFi actually works assuming you want to pay for it. SWA WiFi is the biggest joke in the industry. It literally didn't work about 8 flights in a row that I paid for it and it's just cheap enough that I don't want to mess with getting a refund. Biggest scam in the industry.

speaking of wifi...the new wifi on Delta planes is awesome. Can stream live TV my phone with no issues.

My wife has gold status on Delta but I typically make her way till the very end to board. We typically check our bags (we're in MSP so 98% of our trips involve no connection) so don't worry about overhead space, and why is everyone in such a hurry to be first onboard?