Originally Posted by
canadiancow
Okay so foreign *S does not get you any special boarding group. It's a bit of a shame - a very cheap and easy way to reward alliance loyalty. Even just guaranteeing zone 4 would be useful, though I think 3 would be reasonable.
I always got a better group on UA when I was E35K, and I appreciated that.
I think the bottom line is AC has too few zones. I think the US3 are pretty much all doing something like:
- GS/ConciergeKey/whatever DL's equivalent is
- 1K/EXP/Diamond
- J/F/some lesser elites
- Even lesser elites + *G
- ~3-6 more groups after that
Not including people with disabilities or parents with small children, I think there are about 8-9 boarding calls on most US3 flights I'm on vs AC's max of 6. I think AA even has group 8 or group 9 on some flights (and ConciergeKey and EXP aren't part of a numbered zone, as far as I recall, so it would have been more like 10-11 total groups).
AC also does a consistently poor job of both policing gates and following zoned boarding procedures. For anyone to really feel they're really getting value out of it, I think they also need to do better on that front.