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United Airlines Aircraft Boarding Process Changes

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Source: Various Reports

Date: Jan 09, 2013

Source: At least one chat board on the internet
Author: Shannon Kelly

Apparently, on January 7, a representative from United published information on changes to the boarding process on this flyer discussion chat board. Today, January 9, the official announcement 'United Daily' finally arrives in flight attendant employee inboxes. 

Anyway, here's part of the public post:

Over the next several months, we’re going to be making several changes to address crowding and consistency and, frankly, to help you just understand where you should stand as you wait to board. Over time, we’ll also make physical changes to our gate areas, deploy better directional signage, and enact changes to the boarding process itself. 

Bear with us as these changes roll out over a period of months. Here is a brief overview of what you will see: 

  • Simplified Boarding Groups (January 8-9, with full implementation January 10):Starting late tomorrow, we plan to reduce the number of boarding groups from 7 to 5 (plus pre-boarding). The new boarding group priority will be:
  • Pre-Boarding: Customers with disabilities, then Global Services and uniformed military personnel
  • Group 1: Global Services, Premier 1K, Premier Platinum, premium cabins
  • Group 2: Premier Gold, Star Gold, Premier Silver, Star Silver, MileagePlus Presidential Plus and Club cardholders, MileagePlus Explorer and Awards cardholders
  • Groups 3-5: General boarding
Worth noting: If you are traveling on January 9 or 10, and checked in to your flight before we made the change, you can refresh your online boarding pass to see your new boarding group. You can also go to a kiosk to reprint your boarding pass.

  • Revised Gate Layout with Premium Bypass Lanes (March/April): We will add more boarding lanes – in many cases, one for each boarding group. At nearly every gate, our Premier Access boarding will be comprised of two separate lanes – enabling a dedicated line for groups 1 and 2 respectively. Some of you have already seen this concept, as we are testing this new layout at several gates (in many cases with temporary signage). Below are some of the gates where we are testing this layout:
  • Chicago-O’Hare (ORD) – B8, C16 and C18 (adding two more at a later date)
  • Cleveland (CLE) – C27 and C3
  • Denver (DEN) – B23 and B32
  • Houston (IAH) – C40 and E2
  • Los Angeles (LAX) – 70B and 73
  • New York/Newark (EWR) – C123 and C131
  • San Francisco (SFO) – 73 and 80
  • Washington-Dulles (IAD) – C19 and D7
We'll have more information to share in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your patience – and especially your feedback – as we work to make our boarding process better.

Shannon Kelly
Director, Customer Insights
United Airlines

 

WILMA Returns

Here's what they said about 'WILMA' in United Daily:

In the third change, we will modify the method we use to determine how customers are assigned to the three general boarding groups. The new method will speed the movement of customers onboard the aircraft as they stow their carry-ons and get seated. This last change, which requires more IT work, will come after the first two changes.

Called “WilMA,” the revised method will apply to the general boarding groups 3, 4 and 5. The first group to board will be customers sitting in window seats, followed by those in middle seats and finally those in aisle seats. Coinciding with WilMA, we will board customers on most United Express flights in four groups, but we’ll use five boarding groups for mainline flights.

This approach – used by our United subsidiary before the merger – replaces our current system of assigning general group customers to groups based on their row number, starting with those in the back of the aircraft.

 

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