prometa

F9 style? How will passengers know there's no room left while they're on the jetway?

Many times I've been asked to use the sizer at security, and then again at the gate. They'll ask people to check/gate check/repack otherwise if it doesn't fit.

tcp1

No. I'm a 1K and this still bugs me. About half of the people I see bringing 3 bags onboard or so are people in the back - but a good portion are people in BG 1 and 2 who think like this, and United encourages it by rarely (ever? I've never seen it) enforcing carry on rules in BG1.

I also take issue with your "vast majority are non elites" assessment. I fly out of IAD and DEN. BG 1 and 2 are consistently larger than 3-4-5 combined.

Should elites get some basic perks? Absolutely. But when those perks start infringing on others even getting their basic carry on allotments, no.

That being said, it boggles my mind when I see a guy in BG5 with a gigantic duffle bag not budging when the GA announces bins will be full. But it happens every flight it seems, and half the time they have the nerve to complain that United sucks because they can't board last with a canvas bag full of 49 baseball bats and helmets.

Maybe this is where I turn on my "elite" snobbery, but I may not always be a 1K in the future but I wouldn't be caught dead in group 5 unless I was traveling with anything more than a small backpack or shoulder bag. $25 isn't onerous to check IMHO, and this is where Premier Access has some value..


But then again this is the group of the flying public I just don't understand, along with the folks who don't bother to pick seats online when they clearly booked in advance. I've seen the same reactions when I was in a Spirit (shudder) boarding area, and that's their official policy. (Although I can't wait until BE goes wide and makes both of these problems the norm. Oh, that'll be fun. )

MojaveFlyer

I rather like the approach Alaska uses. If you check your bag at the podium, they tag it, and you leave it at the end of the jet bridge. And as a reward, you get to board early (somewhere between the elites and the by-row-number groups. Makes a lot of sense to all. They are guaranteed overhead space for their other item and are making boarding go faster.

STS-134

I don't know what it is about the airline business but why does everyone associated with the airlines always want to do things that piss off passengers? Instead of charging a fine for bringing carry on bags onboard, why not give incentives to check them? Free snacks/alcoholic beverages if you check your bag. Those who don't have anything valuable in there and don't mind checking it will gladly do so. Didn't anyone who runs an airline ever read Aesop's fable about "The North Wind And The Sun"?

tcp1

Well this is the great Smisekian conundrum, is it not? You can look at things in two ways. Jeff saw the world as business in spite of customers - who were always trying to get something extra for free and were cheap. There is some truth to this, and plenty of people do think the rules don't apply to them - but adopting that stance as SOP creates the adversarial culture we see at United today. You can't run a customer centered business while declaring the customer as the enemy.

But we really can't only blame United. People are cheap. Cheaper than they've ever been. Airfares have dropped, and people expect something for nothing. Cheap trumps all, but people don't lower their service expectations. (This is why I think Basic Economy will be a disaster).

Incentives do work, but there's a point where you can't just keep throwing bonuses as people for following the rules. United already doesn't charge to gate check - so in reality it's a good way to check a bag for free and some people know that. I don't think adding free perks would alleviate the situation. People who ignore the rules still will think they're more important, and those who volunteer probably would have anyway.

sbm12

If I don't need to secure space for my bag then why would I want to spend more time in an economy seat? That doesn't seem like much of a reward to me.

halls120

I don't think I've ever seen anyone in back board without at least one bag carried on. YMMV, of course.

sbm12

I put my backpack/messenger bag/whatever I happen to be flying with on that trip under the seat in front of me. Even when it is my only bag. It has stuff in it I want to use during the flight and there is plenty of room for it and me at my seat.

NorthwestFlyer

What Airline was that?

Baze

And I've seen way too many elites just shove their tiny bag in sideways. Or with the new space bins where bags will fit standing on edge and nobody does and doesn't listen to the FA's telling them how to put their bags in.

MojaveFlyer

Judging by the mass surge when groups are called and all the "gate lice", I think most people just want to get on the plane and in their seat. You're obviously an experienced flyer to think like this, but we're really the minority.

halls120

IME, you are the exception and not the rule. In every one of my domestic flights over the last 18 months, on UA, AA, DL and B6, carry on bags had to be taken off the plane and gate checked. The only flight where that didn't happen was an AS flight to San Jose, CR, that was barely 2/3 filled.

Aspen

There was a pre-emptive announcement at DEN of 28 bags needing to be gate checked recently on a high density configured 772 (my first experience in this new sardine arrangement) before boarding had even started - my re-action was that this was conclusive proof that there are too many people in too small a space.

For me the announcement was not at all attractive with the promise that the gate checked bags would be checked to one's final destination - not very convenient for me flying to SYD when I want to change clothes in LAX before the long flight.

warrenw

Okay so let's look at the definition of elite.

To me, someone who is elite is 1K, maaaybe platinum. But for this particular instance let's just say that elite means 1K only.

How many 1K are on your average flight? The most I have ever had was 27, which if you think about it is A LOT, on a flight from AUS-SFO the Monday after the Austin F1 GP. A flight like that it would make sense would be elite heavy. But that's the exception not necessarily the norm and I would assume most flights have very few 1K pax.

BG2 is premier and the United co-branded credit card, which a ton of people get. Even when I first started flying I was BG2 because of the credit card and I had zero miles. Anyway I guess my point is it's safe to say that there aren't as many elite on each flight as the lines seem to suggest.

I don't think that elites should be able to carry on 5 bags or something like that and deny the right to regular pax. That's wrong. But maybe rules should be more lenient for them, like their bags can be slightly larger or an extra personal item, etc. just a little bit of leeway instead of a comment I read above earlier which was "so which bag are you going to give me" which just comes across as rude.

Loren Pechtel

Won't fit I would definitely go for. No room--you're penalizing a late border for the actions of an earlier border. A bad idea.