Tag Archives for boarding.
American Airlines is installing electronic boarding gates at new DFW gates and pitching them as a way to make boarding smoother, more consistent, and less congested. But these turnstiles do not solve the real causes of boarding delays—and they may leave passengers with less flexibility, less human help, and one more point of failure between the gate and the aircraft.
American Airlines tells elites and even some credit card customers that priority boarding means they can skip the general line and board at any time through the priority lane. But one gate agent at Miami reportedly shut that lane down after Zone 4, turning a benefit meant to preserve overhead bin space and save time into the exact opposite.
The Southwest Airlines boarding experience has been the worst of all possible worlds since moving to assigned seating on January 27. Now flight attendants are being asked to shoulder the burden, and their union is putting the airline on blast.
I didn’t plan to be a guinea pig for Southwest’s first day of assigned seating, but after American’s storm cancellations and operational meltdown I rebooked—and got a front-row seat to the new boarding reality. Seats may now be assigned, but the gate process still forces early queuing while carry-on bin space turns the aisle into a traffic jam, with passengers backtracking to stow bags and flight attendants trying to manage the pile-ups
Since the 1930s, nearly every airplane has boarded passengers from the left side. The reason traces back to a small procedural habit that aviation inherited — and never escaped.
American’s new Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden offhandedly mentions that “we’ve seen a 10% reduction in gate checked bags just within the first few weeks” of the carrier’s new boarding process.
If they’ve made changes to consciously drive down the number of bags they’re gate checking, that’s actually a huge win for customers and they should be shouting it from the rooftops! I just can’t figure out why they’re seeing this result.
Airlines offer priority boarding to first class passengers and to their elite frequent flyers. They also usually offer it to uniformed military personnel, and passengers with disabilities and to families with small children.
If you want to get on the plane early and don’t want to enlist in the military, I guess just keep having kids? Or pretending to?
More and smaller airports are needed. Streamlined security, that doesn’t wait for nationwide universal rollout, is needed. We need runways and taxiways and air traffic capacity to increase throughput without stacking delays. Most of all, we need to avoid complacency that accepts the status quo as given.
Airline passengers are pretending to be active duty members of the military, in order to board flights early.
American Airlines has been doing a lot of tinkering with its boarding process. They rolled out tech to enforce boarding groups, ‘declaring war on gate lice’ by having their systems audibly refuse boarding to passengers cutting the line and boarding before their group is called. And starting May 1, most domestic flights will begin boarding 5 minutes earlier.
Now they’re changing their boarding groups again.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
