emcsweeney

I boarded a flight recently. There were other pax too. I'm pretty sure some of them had never flown UA before, or they fly very rarely. How dare they stand up and get in line...especially if they're within earshot of another gate that's boarding....why can't they understand what's going on!!!!

LarkSFO

I had this problem recently at SJC! (on AA in this case)

Heard F being called (thank you AA for the CPU!), walked up and expected to board.

The announcement was for the next gate over... I was early in line to board my actual flight.

So I stood there at the front of the line for 11 minutes until boarding actually began, at least 3 FT'ers took my picture to demonstrate 'Elite Gate Lice'.

aCavalierInCoach

total cluster at LAX tonight for 1057 to SFO. group 2 was huuuuuge.

on the plus side, service in F was impressive. PDB of my choice, pretzels, snack choice, hot towel on a 60 minute flight.

vandrei

I believe the term is "gate lice."

Lots of times they are not even Group 2 - many are Group 3, 4, or 5.

I have even seen some of them try to board ahead of Group 2, and in many cases they get away with doing so because UA does not consistently enforce the boarding rules.

That said, I connected through IAH this weekend on the way to SEA. My flight into IAH was late, and by the time I got to the gate at IAH, Group 3 and 4 were already boarding. The GA saw my Group 2 pass and stopped Group 3 and 4 to let me board.

^

Even the Silvers and Golds in Group 2 will probably be happy.

More than once have I witnessed Group 3 (or later) pax try to board ahead of actual Premiers.

Edit: Actually, the Golds in Group 2 will probably still be unhappy because they will have to spend time with us Silvers. :P

Montereybay

I boarded UA1456 at gate 89 last night at SFO. It was the old two lane set-up but I was happy to see that the Group numbers called were being shown on the TVs around the gate. I think this helped a lot, especially for late arriving passengers. I'm Group 1 but arrived when 2 was boarding...boy did I have to stand in a long line...

wildbill412007

I've got to say, during the weather issues this weekend I was transfered onto a US Air flight SEA-PHL. When they called Zone One 2/3rds of the gate area surged forward.
My opinion, way worse than United. (I was, sadly, towards the end of this line). GA's did cut out the other zoners, but they simply went to the front of the non-moving line and lets face it, there were only 4 of those I saw from the end of the zone 1 line. Zone 1 took 15 min to board, by the end of which, there was no overhead space. Boarding sucks at other airlines too.

jackal

Wow--that's new, I think; Shannon had mentioned that something like that was coming, so maybe they're trialing it in SFO. It really helps on AS.

edcho

I saw it while connecting at ORD near gate B5 (? I think). however, it wasn't too useful as it was stuck on Group 5 the entire time .

exerda

This is what the folks who say, "You can still board anytime," are really missing w/r/t the PMUA red carpet.

mariof

I was on a A319 PHL-SFO that had half of the plane board in group 2. The real hilarity ensued getting off the plane when all these group 2 economy plus people tried to get to the back of the plane to get their carry-ons. Fun times.

Why not have 10 groups, or 20 or 50 if that's what it takes. Then have the system combine these groups into just 5 boarding groups depending on the plane, route and the airport. This way they can make all groups be about the same size. I'm sure their current groups work for an average flight, but there aren't very many average flights out there.

edcho

That's an interesting point -- some people are trying to exit while some people are pushing their way to the back of the plane for their carry-ons. Delays the deboarding time so delays cleaning crew (if any) and turn-around time.

AGSF

Cluster at IAH last week, too. IAH - SFO at 6 PM. Of course everyone on the plane is going to have status and/ or a United credit card. 75% of Bay Area residents have the United credit card. Group 2 was the biggest, by far.

You can sort of tell how many of each status are on the plane if you have gold status by looking at the upgrade list. I was around #14, so that tells me that a huge number of people in that Group 2 were Silver or credit card holders.

I've been impressed with punctuality this year, but it's time to put platinums and golds back in a separate boarding group (I'll keep saying this over and over and over again).

bocastephen

Two more competing datapoints - ANA high capacity 777s between NRT and TPE right during Chinese New Year - fully loaded, lots of bigger bags, carry-ones, boxes, shopping bags, etc.

Both flights fully boarded in UNDER 30 minutes. While having two boarding jetways did help, one of the first differences was having agents wade into the giant cluster mess and move everyone into 3 distinct single file lines - Business, Star Gold and Economy and they were ruthless in enforcing the priority, even going back into the lines to make sure no one moved where they shouldn't have.

When the doors opened for boarding, instead of a mad rush forward, 3 distinct streams of passengers moved through the process quickly, and once on board, I could see people moved with purpose, put their bags up and sat down immediately, clearing the aisle so no one was gummed up behind them.

If ANA can board 300+ people in 20-25 minutes through two doors, I would hope UA can board 150 people in under 30 minutes through one, right?

Maybe the solution is giving everyone in Group 1 a cattle prod to use on the Group 3-6 passengers who stand in the aisle clueless about where to put their bags or find their seat?

CaptKornDog

Funny! (Yet probably true for many!)

NgatesSEA

+1 on both fronts. Great on-time performance this year and I realize a Gold is far from god's gift to United revenue but we need to board before credit card holders.