Appearing to borrow from the Southwest Airline playbook (where you are assigned a letter and number when you check in and queue up and board the plane in alphabetical and then numerical order), United had stanchions set up into rows that were labeled Group 1, Group 2, Group 3, Group 4 and Group 5. You could queue up in your designated group whenever you wanted and when the time came to board the plane, Group 1 was boarded first in the order in which they were on line, followed by Group 2, and so on.
You know what? It was simple but wow, was it effective! Everyone boarded the plane in an organized fashion, no one had to worry about anyone else cutting the line, and it was much less, to invent a word, “cattle-esque.” It just worked, and did so really well!
I don’t know if this is simply a test United is doing or if it’s a permanent change (then again, we haven’t flown on United in a while – maybe they’ve been doing it for years and we just didn’t know it, LOLOL!), but it was set up at both MCO and ORD. I hope it’s permanent because it made that part of the flying process that much more comfortable. United has gotten a lot of bad press recently, and with good reason (this and this, for example). At least this is finally something positive that can be said about them.
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