UA-NYC

Cognitative dissonance - it's ignoring the "1" (or whatever digit on your BP) and just thinking you have "Premier Access" (as half the plane does), and since that's the "special lane", they must be calling you up

Andy Big Bear

Well I was thinking it was something like that, but the gate agent does absolutely nothing to contradict it. I mean if you are in the very back of the plane with a huge rollerbag trying to stuff it in the overhead, that doesn't scream FF to me. I was just thinking it was the blowback of post holiday travel and the GA's just not having the patience to explain to everyone that they aren't in the correct boarding sequence.

avidflyer

I get a kick out of all the "Jeff and Co are out to destroy the airline" stuff. Folks this seems pretty clear to me: They tried it the CO way because CO was relatively successful with the very limited/much smaller market they had. Many of the CO "things" (all elites are equal, IRROPS attitude/processes, Boarding, meal ordering, and MANY others) do not scale and do not work in the bigger UA network. They are CLEARLY changing course...OK fine, take the pi$$ out of them for a series of mistakes but they are CLEARLY changing course. The fact that they are changing ANYTHING should be the signal that many of the changes that happened on 3/3 have been recognized as mistakes and reversed. IRROPS and Boarding are/have been horrible but give them a chance to reverse course and make it right. I am as cynical as the next guy but I take some amount of comfort in the fact they ARE adjusting. I have been part of many integrations that were hell bent to force one process over the other, nobody had the guts to admit a mistake, and the thing entered a death spiral.

The attempt to "fix" acknowledges, by definition, the fact that it was broke., Give them a chance.

aacharya

It's a lot of passengers to fight, honestly. It can't be an easy job.

mkr

How about we all go out and rent wheelchairs and have staff at airports push us to UA gates for the next few weeks? Then there will be many FTers with various Premier level statuses showing up for all UA flights. We all get to preboard with GS, the GAs have fun, and Smisek and other UA management can tear out their hair.
Any other creative spinoffs to this protest? (Disclaimer: By the way, this in no way is intended to make fun of persons with disabilities. I have a disabled person close to me who flies and needs a wheelchair to get to the gates.)

xevious

Or for that matter, what real post-merger enhancement can any of us point to that has earned our trust and deepened our loyalty to UA? It doesn't matter which airline you flew pre-merger. The growing consensus across the board is that UA's unstated mission statement is to truly alienate their most loyal customers.

One benefit of UA Insider's posts (not shooting the messenger, she's just doing her job and is appreciated for her hard work): they make us more "united" than this airline is even remotely capable of doing.

FlyWorld

I'll give them a chance when they allow me to upgrade. As long as there are no upgrades, I have no reason to fly with them anymore than absolute minimum nor to pay more than lowest possible fare.

The rest is noise.

avidflyer

"We would like to offer pre-boarding to members of the Ministry of Silly Walks...Silly MSW's please feel free to board at this time"

UA-NYC

Agreed! Hopefully they'll adjust the Group 2 debacle and we'll continue the streak of "loyalty wins" under out belts that started late Q4 last year.

pjsantoro

What they really need is a mechanism to enforce boarding zones...as you point out if it continues to be up to individual GAs to enforce manually there will never be consistency. I don't envy them!

The "new" Group 1 is really just the old Group 1 & 2 combined. I've only done 2 segments since the switch in F and it really was not too noticeable on my flights, but I've been in either Group 1 or Group 2 for a while. I also fly mostly domestic which have fewer people in the front cabins anyway.

u600213

UA619 DCA-ORD on 1/11, GA called for disabled, Military in Uniform and GS. Then she calls group 2. She had forgot to call group 1 entirely. Pissed me off but I let it slide since I fly there often and not looking to make enemies. Others in gate area confirmed she had not called group 1 so it wasn't me spacing out.

avidflyer

I tend to agree but I have to believe that will be addressed. I am not talking about not taking cash over CPU's ..that would be stupid and bad business but they need to fix the major issue I see around UG's which is: If somebody is willing to "pay" with miles or RPU/GPU's then why are they not taking them. CPU's should be by status and then fare class...fair enough but to hand over the waitlist at 24hrs and throw everyone into an UG scrum is just stupid on their part. I have had more 20K mile upgrades go unfilled only to get the CPU at the gate. They lose 20K points or a RPU every time they do that. My assumption is that it is an IT issue but if I were CEO that would be the first thing I fixed. They are literally throwing away money every flight.

aacharya

Or UA needs to have a "passenger guide" that every passenger must click and accept before ticketing that explains, among others, Boarding Groups.

limey1K

Unless it was intentional on his/her part

Does anyone have any idea of a typical hub-hub elite percentage loading? e.g. 1% GS, 10% 1K, 20% Plat, etc

mrjay

F, 1k and Plat are all BG-1 now, it wouldn't surprise me to see half the plane line up in elite heavy airports such as hubs or my home SNA.
When I was a group 3 gold, I do recall seeing GA's often chastise someone trying to sneak by and then announcing "we are only boarding group 2 now...".

Now that they let us lowly plats board with the truly elite folks, I no longer get to witness much of the gate carnage.