Considering how much I like flying on Delta, I send my share of shade in their direction. To their credit, they’ve been great about allowing passengers to use technology to manage the travel experience. While maybe not being the first to offer a real-time seat map on the app, push notifications about flight changes, or the ability for you to track your checked bags (including a notification on which baggage claim area to find your bag), Delta’s execution has been pretty darn good once they roll things out to passengers.
When a company operates efficiently, the times when they do something not so efficient stand out even more. Such was what we found when on a Delta flight from Orlando.
Delta was trying to solve the problem of people gathering around the boarding gate. You know, the people who stand in front of the gate, even if they purchased basic economy tickets and will be the last ones onboard the plane.
While Delta has eliminated zones and uses a “branded” boarding process to inform passengers of their boarding groups, they still have to deal with people trying to board when it’s not their turn. To solve the problem, Delta decided to use technology, and while the idea was admirable, the execution was terrible.
For this flight, we were greeted with this all too familiar scene when we reached our gate.
The gate agents were telling passengers they could see if their upgrades had cleared and check seat assignments on the monitors in the gate area.
I still love the late 80’s vibe of the airport signs in Orlando
The boarding groups would also be indicated on the monitors, going from Delta One and Diamond Medallion members to Main Cabin 1, 2 & 3.
When the boarding process started, no one seemed to move.
Why didn’t they see the boarding group on the monitor you may be asking? It’s because none of the monitors face the walkway, where most people stand to wait to board the flight.
Sure, this position is great if you’re sitting in a seat or standing in line to talk to a gate agent, but the monitors are useless for the rest of us. We also couldn’t hear the announcements clearly in the walkway so no one knew when to board.
I’ve noticed this problem with monitor placement could be a gate-specific issue. Some gates have forward-facing monitors.
While some still have monitors facing sideways.
I’ve also noticed that if two monitors are behind the desk, one of them will show the current boarding zone while the other shows the flight information.
I’m glad to see Delta has tweaked things here and there. If they want people to board based on the monitors in the gate area, the monitors need to face where people stand when waiting to board a flight.
Once they solve that problem, this is a great idea. You don’t have to speak the language to understand boarding zones matching your boarding pass. Delta’s other technology worked just fine because I received a notification on my phone when boarding started.
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