rwmiller56

Speak for yourself.

Those may be your priorities, but they are not mine. Bin space is my main priority.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

I was speaking as if I were the person not flying enough to reach top-tier status, as I allude to later in the response. Sorry if offence was taken.

Basically, if I was a non-top tier elite w/ United, I would recognize that United is going to treat its best customers a little better. All airlines do it. As do hotels, rental car companies, some stores, cruise lines, drilling contractors, etc.

usbusinesstraveller

FullFare

Well, the poster is right if his main route is SFO-JFK (which is my main route). UA abandoned it a couple of years ago. And for what? EWR?
DL has 7 non stops a day on the route, with really nice coffin seats on all aircraft, some of them with 40 J seats. AA (which had been my preferred airline several decades ago when they had a hub at SJC) only has 5 flights a day SFO-JFK. AA pretty much abandoned SFO flyers over the past decade. Can't even fly them up and down the West Coast further north of San Francisco.

So I think it depends on the route. I gave a ton of flying to DL starting several years ago when UA's service went into the toilet (believe me, it did). The difference in reliability, even to this day, has been that DL has trumped UA all across the country. You can just see it at many of their locations where they have a manager on flights kicking butt to get the flight out on time (even saw it at CVG last weekend).

Were it not for UA's route selection dominance out of SFO, I don't know that they'd compete that well. They have improved lately, though, and I thought of giving them a chance again, until this boarding demotion of paid F non1K flyers was put in. I had 2.6mm on UA. There are posters who hypothesize that UA wants to show more appreciation to its 1K's then an occasional full fare F pax. But how does UA really know how the 1K guy got there? What if he were a 1 year wonder? The demotion of full fare paying F pax, who just happen not to be currently 1K is a foolish move on UA's part, with the potential to piss off far more full fare paying passengers (many like myself who have had large spends over many years) than stroking a recently minted1k. If UA think's that's worth it, I think their fools.

I also go to Hawaii every 2-3 months throughout the year and UA had me captive for decades. Now, AS and HA have excellent service out of all Bay Area airports and it's a pleasure to give my money to them. UA has been a good carrier, but has seen better days and had some peaks and troughs in service. This is just a dumb move as it relates to full fare paying F passengers. I suspect UA will reverse it, or regret it.

As to the million dollar question---what percentage of paid F pax are not 1K?, nobody has convinced me that he/she has that answer. Lots of speculation and know-it-all analysis, but something that is difficult to quantify unless UA itself can provide it---and I doubt even UA can. As other posters have said, "what is the downside of including boarding equality of paid F with 1K pax?" Answer: zilch. It's about stowing bags, and I believe we all know that. Especially if an F cabin pax does not get in line with the gate rushers and get his/her bag in there, and the FA's can't be gestapo on managing whether Y pax take up the bins in F or if F pax put a lot of small stuff up there. The carriers did this when they started charging.

The carriers created this mess with the bag charges, and they can't fix it.

kokonutz

It's fine to treat top tiers better. No one is disputing that. What people are saying (and you are not hearing) is that they are treating paid F WORSE than before. This wasn't just an upgrade for 1ks, it was a downgrade for paid F too.

Paid F already get stuck with the crap meals as GS and 1ks (even on upgrades) get first choice. Now we are forced to board with hoards of Gold. When I fly AA I board with top tier elites and can choose my meal in advance. UA is getting it's arse kicked.

Hmmmm...I'll have to see if I can dig up that brace from my Achilles surgery a decade ago for my already purchased UA F flights!!!

FullFare

Well, it's just a "bet" isn't it? The response by Kokonutz is right on, and I wish I had said it first myself. If UA had "done the math", will somebody stop "betting" and step up with data?

ecoomer

Are you assuming the preboards 1k/gs weren't paid f as well?

I've boarded more than a few flights in paid F as a 1k and not had bin space in F. The new boarding may alleviate some of that.

E

narvik

Exactly!
A solution for some might therefore be, United introduce pre-pre-boarding for all GS/1k who are also paid F.

jsloan

Without speaking for the poster being quoted, I think that's a pretty widely held assumption on this thread, judging by the number of times "paid F" keeps getting mentioned as though it were the ultimate badge of honor. This would come as a surprise to the people on the "GPUs are worthless" thread who complain about how difficult it is to get upgraded, even as a GS or 1K using an instrument, especially out of SFO.

I don't care what anybody else paid for their seat; I'm going to pay as little as United will allow for mine, and I'm not going to be the least bit apologetic for it.

This is really very simple. If the people who insist that this is going to kill UA's F booking are correct, the boarding process will be altered, likely by the end of the year. If not, the boarding process will still be altered, two or three years down the road, because the single most consistent thing about UA seems to be that they tinker with their boarding process all the time. (Think: the couple of automated gates that still exist).

zombietooth

On my second flight of the day, ORD-PHX, the new boarding procedures went pretty smoothly.
I again waited until the end of boarding to board myself because I wanted to see if the dire predictions might come true.
Again, I had no problem finding space for my rollaboard in F, although someone had poached my seat and was summarily removed by the FAs. I was the last person to board.
So far, everything seems OK.^

pdx1M

I think there is a lot of talking past each other going on in this thread. I don't see any issue with UA boarding GS/1K ahead of non-status F. However, they have (potentially) put paid F behind Gold which seems to me wrong. Non status paid F may be "worth" less to UA than a 1K but I severely doubt that it is worth less than a Gold. Qualification for G is pretty modest by the standards we are talking about here. It would not be unusual for a single paid F that was part of an international trip to represent more revenue than the annual revenue for a G (of course this won't be the majority case but it isn't hard to construct). I think UA should have carved out a BG0 between 1K and Plat for F. Or personally, I'd have just created a single premium preboard that consisted of GS/1K/F. While a few GS might have had bruised egos it would have make 0 practical difference for their travels. I say this having spent many years as a GS, many as a 1K before that, and some as a lifetime 1K since I dropped GS. Even out of SFO it just isn't that big of a deal if you are boarding with a GS/1K/F group (and by the way that was the PMUA sequencing). The only part of the new procedure I think is in error is mixing non-status F with all the way down to Golds.

atakam

Silver Fox

This a million times. Part of the solution to boarding early or not always comes back to overhead space. They need to enforce their own rules and see what happens.

halls120

Good point. I could spend more time in the IAD Polaris lounge before my flight. Oh, wait.....

If I pay for a Polaris fare, unless it comes with guaranteed OH space, I'm boarding early.

Supima

Another data point - UEX flight last night from MSP-EWR -- new boarding procedure utilized and effective -- very pleased so far with the new process.