jackal

News to me. Granted, I haven't been non-status since 3/3/12 so I don't have personal experience with what zone number each seat is assigned, but WilMA has been mentioned as the current boarding order dozens of times in this very thread and yours is the first post I've seen saying WilMA isn't being done today.

BostonBusinessTraveler

I'm guessing that they announced the plans and new strategy but that it's taking time to implement and train the staff. Big changes often roll out in waves and not to everyone at the same time.

mgcsinc

Indeed, I thought I'd seen lots of people claim that WilMA was the current practice. UA Insider's post confirms it's not.

jackal

Well, that would explain the complaints about lengthy boarding times and why they are still taking longer to board the planes than PMUA. Wonder when that'll get fixed.

flyer_south

Thanks for the update, Aaron. As a 1K this won't affect me but WilMA is a truly bad idea: it sounds great that the window passengers won't have to push over the already boarded aisle passengers but works terribly in practice as the passengers in the back tend to leave luggage in the front bins and the aisle passengers have to search all over for an empty bin.

UA-NYC

Color me shocked/confused as well - didn't they switch pretty much immediately to WilMA from the less efficient PMCO process after change #1? Guess it's been that way for awhile after all...

dsquared37

1: It worked pretty well on pmUA.

2: Boarding back/middle/front produces results contrary to your fears?

I'm going to hazard a guess you've never seen this in practice even as you make conclusions on it's efficacy.

flyer_south

Perhaps I am mistaken but WilMA is not what I remember of the pmUA process, may be because I always had priority. I do remember this process on LH and its not working very well for me as I always had an aisle seat.

You are free to guess what you wish but asking for facts may be more constructive.

mgcsinc

I don't think dsquared37 was guessing.

WineCountryUA

PMUA was definitively WilMA
circa 2006 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...hod-wilma.html
circa 2008 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...etermined.html
circa 2011 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ctive-hnl.html

exerda

It would definitely explain some of the problems, but not the scrums for groups 1 & 2.

I could have sworn that Shannon as UA Insider had pointed out way back when that they were abandoning the back-to-front boarding which some CO geniuses in management dreamed up (look back in early 2012 at a few of the lengthy threads on boarding--UA had abandoned UA's zone boarding in favor of row boarding back-to-front early on and caused a massive uproar). I guess not... they just hid the back-to-front in the new boarding groups they've renumbered at least four times since then. Or maybe Shannon was right, and it just took them over a year to code their dinosaur systems that way.

jackal

I was specifically referencing boarding times (which is one of three separate and almost unrelated complaints brought up in this thread). I still have a hard time buying that the size or selection or order of groups 1 and 2 have any noticeable effect on boarding times. Thus, until channa's post about UA still not using WilMA, I was never able to reconcile why the current boarding process takes longer than PMUA's. Now it makes sense.

The groups 1 and 2 issues and gate licing issues are separate, and while they do need to be dealt with, as far as boarding times (which affects aircraft utilization and turn times) goes, I suspect fixing SHARES to do WilMA would pretty much take care of that.

I wonder why it took four months and 2,400 posts for someone to point out that UA isn't doing WilMA now...

UA-NYC

Maybe because they actually told us they were doing WilMA, and thus we believed it?

Nothing surprises me anymore w/this airline.

halls120

The way to fix the gate lice problem is to change the carpet utilization back to what it was before 6/11. Of course, that would mean getting rid of the "everyone's an elite" mentality being marketed by United.

exerda

I know, and I agree with you that the boarding time issues are largely due to the back-to-front boarding methodology.

As to the scrums for groups 1 & 2, I think half is process (the PMUA red carpet worked far better IME--and gave 1Ps a place to queue up as well at the head of the regular boarding line), and half is the granularity of the groups. There are just too many people in each of the two groups. PMUA didn't have Platinum, and I honestly don't know how much of an effect lumping them into Group 1 has--but certainly they boarded 1P/*G, 2P/*S separately and had far less of a problem.

And if UA is worried about having "too many groups" (either because of confusion or pax feeling bad that they'd be in Group 5 as a CC holder or Group 10 as a front aisle no-status pax), they can go back to the PMUA way of calling status groups (e.g. "Now boarding 1Ks through the red carpet lane ... now boarding Platinums ..." etc.) so that there are only 3 or 4 numbered groups.