Originally Posted by
AirbusFan2B
Boarding process is your reason for buying a ticket on AA rather than UA? What group are you on AA? And UA?
Originally Posted by
Doppy
AA has basically the exact same boarding, except they assign boarding groups to preboards rather than calling them preboards in basically the same order.
I don't really see the difference between calling GS a preboard versus group 1. At the end of the day, there's ~9 categories of boarding on both airlines.
It's not the same. AA's process is the equivalent of GS, then J+1K+military.
As a UA Gold and AC*G who basically always buys domestic J/F, AA's boarding process is one that actually sways my purchasing decisions. There are other factors too (price and schedule are top of list), but I have definitely made a trip on DL outbound and AA return, based at SFO, a UA hub, when UA had inconvenient non-stops (so I was looking at a 1-stop on all airlines). AA was substantially (~$100) cheaper than DL/UA on the return, way more than was needed to offset not having lounge access. On the outbound, I think they were all roughly the same price and timings, but I had lounge access on UA/DL, and DL's boarding process was more to my liking (F before Diamond, "children" after premium economy)
So in that case, UA lost an F-paying pax over the boarding process. And to be honest, if UA had a boarding process more amenable to premium cabin passengers, they might get much more of my domestic business. The fact that I am *G on two airlines, including UA, and I will rarely choose UA over DL if the pricing and schedule are the same, says a lot. And I don't even like DL.
I want to show up at the gate when they call my (paid J/F) group, and:
1. Not have 50 able-bodied people already on the flight
2. Not have to line up behind all the lower-cabin pax with mid-tier (or OAL) status
I can handle 1K pre-boarding (though I'd prefer if they didn't do it). I can't handle getting to the gate and having to line up behind 50 more people with *G status.
I definitely preferred the old group 1, which I believe was 1K/Platinum/J.
Originally Posted by
ijgordon
The difference is that it sets expectations. On UA, BG 1 doesn't board for quite some time after they start the preboards, but people with "Group 1" on their BP are likely to line up as early as possible thinking they're first on. On AA, most of those same people are probably in group 3 or 4, so they know they have a little wait and are less likely to crowd the boarding area. Of course the flip side is the "priority boarding" from the AA credit card puts you in like Group 5, which certainly doesn't sound like you get much priority.
Not that group 2 on UA is particularly "priority". 5 sounds worse, but I don't think it actually is worse.
Knowing where you fall in the list is actually pretty useful for having a more civilized boarding experience.
One of the things I
do like about UA boarding is that they have lane numbers that are separate from group numbers. I think Lane A and Lane B would eliminate any ambiguity, but contrast that to my main airline (AC) where it's common to see a "1-2" lane and a "3-6" lane, and good luck actually boarding in zone 1 there, because the lane is full of zone 2 pax who are standing where the sign tells them to, all the while blocking zone 1 from boarding.
tl;dr United Airlines has a boarding problem "designed" to punish premium flyers too