I've had it happen on CO flights, and frequently on AA flights. On UA it happened just once, but it was a good one E+ to F on a 767 TATL. :D

Check out this thread, where a spirited discussion is going on concerning this (yet another) difference between PMCO and PMUA practices.

Summary (eliding the more controversial bits): At the gate, UA tends to skip over elites who aren't present and/or look like they'll misconnect. CO upgrades everybody in order. The downside of the UA process is that elites may occasionally lose their upgrades because they weren't present... but the upside is that every F seat gets a confirmed occupant before boarding. The CO process guarantees that you won't lose your upgrade if you're hanging out in the lounge... but if there is a misconnect, that seat can't be filled until the absolute last minute. At which point the GA comes on board and extracts you.

For what it's worth, I saw this happen extensively on CO1007 (LAX-IAH) yesterday. I think it was the most remarkably clusterfurgled pre-boarding process I've seen since 1982 (see footnote [1]). We used gates 65, 64, 63, 62, 60, and 61 in rapid succession. Boarding was through gate 61, but upgrades/standby/seat selection were processed at gate 60 (100 feet away). Battlefield upgrades didn't run until well after boarding had begun (and elites awaiting upgrades were advised to wait by gate 60 just in case). I waited for the upgrade and then took my chances with the scrum, but I saw no less than 4 pax get extracted from Y at the end of boarding... with the predictable resulting overhead bin chaos.

Apparently the gate team was a PMUA crew, getting their on-the-job training in CO practices. And, to be fair, they did start by announcing, "Sorry, we're new at this!"

[1] Western Airlines, BZE-LAX, on a DC-10. 90 minutes before departure, all emergency slides abruptly erupted from the doors onto the tarmac. 15 minutes of stirred-anthill ensued, at the end of which the ground crew cut the slides down, dragged them away, boarded the [overwater] flight, and departed. :eek::eek:

OK, so now I see that you get the point of my original post. It would be great if we could have less clusterfurgled-ness :p with these CO flights...

Oh, no argument! I'm in full agreement about (a) the desirability of unclusterfurgledness, and (b) the irritatingness of postboardingupgrades. (sorry, it got a little Deutsch there...)

On the other hand... while I'm usually very proactive about my upgrade position, I would like to feel safe wandering away from the boarding area, knowing that I won't lose my upgrade if I'm not there to be called. I think I'm willing to accept the occasional extraction in return, and I can't see any way to have my cake and eat it too.

CO1007 was extreme the other day, but I think that can be blamed on the green gate personnel -- which is natural as the merger progresses. They did try to do upgrades before boarding, but ran out of time, I think.

in bold ^

Monday night out of houston : First Class. (pause) Elite Access. What a scrum!

Last Friday from EWR --

Uniform are able to board <short pause>

First Class <5 seconds> and Elites ...

*chaos ensues due to the 50+ elites on the flight*

I was in first class and I think I was the 40th person to board just cause I didn't want to be a gate lice!

5127 EWR-ATL today: "We welcome uniformed military, first class, Continental Presidential Platinum, Platinum, Gold and Silver elites, United elites and all Star Alliance elite members." Granted, it was an RJ170 and wasn't full but still a bit frustrating to board everyone together (first world problem; I know).

Then my biggest issue was there was only wine and Budweiser onboard :p The first 2 rows of Y were stuck with Budweiser since I had enough expiring drink chits for everyone :D

FLL-CLE this afternoon. Gate C7 had FLL-CLE departing followed immediately by FLL-EWR. Unfortunately every OTHER gate agent around the terminal was telling EWR pax to go to C7 and try to check bags, etc. So to begin, a gate already has 2x as many people as it should to board. The order of boarding, I believe went something like this:


'Here at Continental, sorry United, we would like to start with uniformed military'
'Uniformed military and first class'
'Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the flight to EWR. Please wait until after CLE leaves'
'Continental, sorry, United would now like to invite uniformed military, Global Services, Presidential Platinum, 1k, anyone with Elite Access'
'Uniformed military, GS, anyone with elite access on their boarding pass'
'First class, elite access, uniformed military, star silver'
'Ok, we'll start boarding from the back up. Rows ##-##'
'Ladies and gentlemen, if you are going to NEWARK. NEWARK. Please step to the side and wait.'

I was happily confirmed in my bulkhead seat, and waited until the very end to board, as I had no overhead and I wanted to watch this unfold :)

I'm sure things will get better over time.

I had a fun boarding experience today, IAH-ABQ. It started with the experience that this thread is all about. The GA called military... (nothing happens)... then F (six or seven passengers board, with me last), and then as I'm walking down the jetway I hear "Anyone with Elite Access on their boarding pass." And I cringe instinctively, because I can visualize the scrum developing behind me.

But that's not the fun part. I get on board, take one look at the cabin, and laugh out loud. See, this flight is scheduled for a 737-500 (8 F seats), but on the mobile app it showed a 737-700 (12 F seats). So I'd asked the GA which we were flying, and she said very definitively "It's an -800". With 20 F seats. And in fact the GA called "First class... rows 1-4" at boarding.

Anyway, I get on board and, indeed, it's a -700. So I turn to the flight attendant and cheerfully say "You may have some confused passengers -- the gate agent thinks there are either 2 or 4 rows of first class, and you have 3."

And, indeed, halfway through boarding the GA runs on board, goggles at the cabin, and says "Now what am I supposed to do?" Fortunately, her seat map only showed 8 seats, so we had 4 extra (and thus nobody got downgraded). But it was a merrie old tyme when all the elites on the upgrade list (who had already boarded) realized there were 4 unassigned seats in F...

End of "Elite Access" gets closer
 

Just printed my BP for a flight tomorrow. I noticed the "Elite Access" is gone, and in its place is "Premier Access" at the top of the BP and "Boarding Group 1" at the bottom. It still shows "Presidential Platinum / *G " after my OP number.

I wonder if they're just going to call "Zone 1" to start the boarding. It's an E45, so no FC section.

I flew from BOS-EWR yesterday and had Premier Access / Boarding Group: 1 on my BP. Apparently, there are now 8 boarding groups. Uniformed military and GS first, then group 1 (first class, 1K, Platinum), group 2 (gold, silver, *G), group 3 (all elites), group 4 (CC holders), groups 5-8 general boarding. I asked the Red Coat if this is the new order and he said that they got a memo last week changing boarding.

Technically, GS are supposed to be called before all Zones, whether there's an F cabin or not. However, the formality of the boarding process seems to be proportional to the size of the plane, and I've never yet had a GA do the full monty for an ERJ-145.

(Partly off-topic: last December,on a US CR7 from YUL-PHL, I was briefly taken aback when the GA lifted the mike and just said, "You can all board now." I had a brief internal moment of DYKWIA ("Hey, I'm *G! Don't I board first), then realized there were all of 7 passengers on the whole jet, and started laughing at myself).

So they finally made the logical step and numbered every group. I think FT has been suggesting that for at least the last 5 years.

I still think the best was the time I was flying a PMCO 738 EWR-LAX and the GA announced that, because there were over 100 elites, it would be more efficient to board the kettles first.

That was perhaps the finest moment of my kettle career...:D