Hey, United Airlines will be revamping its boarding process, and it just might make life better, as reported by WKRN. We all dread the moment the flight starts to board, with people blocking the entry eager to be the first when their zone is called—it’s like being cattle shunted into your pen. You wonder, why are people in a rush to get on if we have assigned seating (unlike on Southwest Airlines, where it really is first come, first served with a window seat)? When you finally get on the plane, you see why: people fill the overhead compartments above your seat. Now you need to hopefully stow your bag in a compartment closer to the front—otherwise, when you land, you’ll be salmon fighting the current upstream to retrieve your bag. And, of course, there’s lots of shifting around if someone beat you to the seat and is in the middle or aisle seat and has to get up to let you in. It’s all just a nightmare.
In some fare categories such as economy light or basic economy, you aren’t even allowed to have your bag in the overhead compartment; it must fit in the space beneath the seat in front of you—which effectively kills any leg room you might have had. We’ve known for a while that airlines don’t mind the nightmare; it encourages passengers to pay extra for priority boarding.
But United is working to change that, and the new methods will take place later this same month. Preboarding occurs as usual, with unaccompanied minors, families with kids 2 and under, active duty military, people with disabilities, and fancy-pants cardholders going first. Then, first class and business class passengers will board first like normal, but then here’s the new concept. Passengers with assigned window seats in economy class will board next. This means no more need for people to stand and shift around to let you in if you have a window seat. We want to cheer! The exit row people will also board at this time.
Then, as common sense dictates, the middle-seat people come on board, followed by the aisle-seat folks. It’s all beautifully orchestrated to move things along. The process is called WILMA, which loosely stands for “window, middle, aisle” (you know, with an extra L for legroom ha ha ha ha). The last folks to board are those flying basic economy, the lowest fare class restricting carry-ons, and anyone who doesn’t have a boarding group number on their ticket.
We love it, and we hope it will work. However, we have to let you know that WKRN reports that United’s previous experiments using the WILMA method only shaved a lousy two minutes off the boarding process. We’re thinking people who prefer aisle seats may shift their preference as they’ll now be the ones fighting for that last bit of overhead compartment space.