yyznomad

Another friendly reminder to some here that the zoned boarding "protocol" was not meant to necessarily improve boarding times.
I am not necessarily referring to the recent above posts. This is a general reminder.

jc94

From an old article...

Yiu said the zone method didn’t yield a time savings, but it offered a better customer experience and made it easier for customer-service agents to enforce the boarding processing with zone numbers.

StuckInYYZ

In September, I was sitting beside my gate in YYZ Int with a clear view of a departing AC flight at the next gate. It was total chaos. I think it took them over an hour to board the plane... the GAs were shouting and the Y passengers (not going to call them lice) were wandering by all over the place. By contrast, I was on BR35 to TPE.... everything was organized (including attendants to board wheelchair'ed passengers. They had staff holding up placards with the zones that passengers were to line up behind and a pair of GAs inspecting everyone's ticket. I doubt if the actual boarding process took more than 20 minutes (and if it did, not by much). The BR staff were all very polite and had everything in hand.

I'm not sure why the difference... but it was a really strange contrast side by side (they didn't depart at the same time).

But what do I know... I don't work at the airport.

canopus27

I agree.

But.

I also believe that some (many?) GA's believe that if they rush / converge / combine / overlap the boarding of various zones, they will be able to improve boarding times (and more importantly, from their perspective, on-time departures ... a stat that we know AC tracks and cares about).

I don't agree with them. And more importantly, I agree with you () ... that the various boarding zones are actually more about delivering good customer service to AC's frequent flyers, than they are about a short term on-time-departure stat.

Unfortunately, I'm not in charge of the boarding processes everywhere.

yosemite1

Flew YOW>YYZ earlier, they boarded 1&2 together. Maybe thats a common practice for smaller airports / flights?
No complaints from me though, I just walked on

Plumber

This is not that common in YOW...It happens some times in YOW for flights to YYZ, but not all the time. Usually things are done correctly. Perhaps the boarding time was a few minutes behind so the GA thought they could expedite things a little.

I find this frustrating when they do this....Being given the benefit of boarding in Zone 1 as an SE, on such a flight there will be maybe 10-12 Zone one passengers.....but there are probably 40-50 Zone 2 passengers. When they call them together, we now have 50-60 Zone 1/2 passengers and the benefit offered to me by AC is now lost.

I do find that they board Zones 1 and 2 together more frequently when I fly in single cabin aircraft (ie YVR-YLW) where there are only a couple or a few Zone 1 passengers.

canadiancow

Quoting from a different thread because my reply is more suited here.

I'm actually not a fan of GAs allowing any exceptions.

Not that I have an issue when you're legitimately entitled, but I've seen NUMEROUS foreign*G go up during zone 1 and say "I'm Star Gold" (card in hand) and be allowed to board.

If the zone on your BP is wrong, tough. Complain to whomever.

As soon as you allow any exceptions, you end up with dozens of incorrect exceptions every single flight.

It's one thing to say "I'm zone 2 and this is my companion". It's quite another to walk up with a credit card and a family of four zone 5 BPs, and say "I should be zone 2". The GA has no way of determining if your card is still active, etc.

yyznomad

Unfortunately, it is now prevalent with GAs improperly letting people by. Once in awhile you will see enforcers, which I welcome, but the majority just DGAF. par for the course...

MasterGeek

Following OLCI, the boarding zone for my Aeroplan award flight was Zone 2 with the AC*CC (Ihave a TD Aeroplan Visa)mention. Then I changed the ff number through “ manage check-in “ to my United Mileage Plus account then back to my Aeroplan number but it is no longer showing Zone 2 with the AC*CC mention.

Any way to get back my Zone 2 ?

thanks

yyznomad

Fiordland

I for one give up on zone boarding and just board when-even where doing interlined flights between AC and United. An AC issued United boarding pass does not always a boarding zone. The same holds for a United issued boarding pass for AC.

Both these airlines appear to want antitrust immunity to better co-ordinate their operations. Perhaps that special legal standing is also required to print the zone boarding information on each others card.

If it is zone 1 or 2 it is pretty much irrelevant. You are still going to have lots of bin space. The aircraft is still going to depart on time. I could see being worked up about boarding zone 1, 2 and 3 together. But boarding zone 1 and 2 together is a non-issue from a customer service outcome perspective.

jc94

In certain narrow bodies, I’ve struggled in J boarding like 8th in Zone 1 so does make a difference.

SKYEG

That's all that really matters. If they are going to advertise something they have to deliver. No matter how minuscule this issue is, it drives me nuts! Having that option of boarding first on a full narrowbody flight is pretty valuable.

I board last 90% of the time lol.

yyznomad

bawm

AC7616 YYZ-DCA Zone 1 and 2 called together.