What Everyone Must Know About the Boarding Process with American Airlines
For years, most airlines used the same procedure when having travelers board their planes, but that has changed recently. Instead of the old process, which included families with young children and those who need a little extra assistance boarding first followed by those in first class and then working from the front of the plane back, many airlines are changing their entire boarding process.
Of course, no airline has created the same boarding process as any of the others, which is why many travelers who are not airline specific are often a little confused when it comes to the new boarding guidelines!
American Airlines is one of those airlines that has a new boarding procedure in place, and they are calling it a random seating method that is supposed to save a significant amount of time for every traveler.
This new boarding process involves ten different boarding groups with the first being preboarding and the rest identified as groups one through nine. Those who are eligible for the preboarding process include any of the ConciergeKey Members, which are basically those people who always fly with American Airlines at least once or twice a week.
As soon as those people are in their seats, the rest of the boarding begins with group one, who are those travelers with first class tickets and any active military member who has their identification with them. Group two is for those who have executive platinum or OneWorld emerald status, while group three is for platinum pro, platinum, and OneWorld sapphire.
Group four has the most amount of people for the new American Airlines boarding process with those passengers who qualify for gold, OneWorld ruby, airpass, premium economy, Alaska Airlines MVP members, and Citi and AAdvantage executive cardmembers status, as well as those who paid for priority boarding.
The main boarding process begins with group five, which are all the main cabin extra, eligible Aadvantage credit cardmembers, and eligible corporate travelers. Groups six, seven, eight, and nine are all reserved for those who have basic economy tickets and the only difference between them all is the boarding number on their ticket.
American Airlines states that this boarding process is not much different than it was in the past, but certain groups are being classified differently. However, they also claim that this new process will be faster, which means that it must be different enough to gain a few minutes and keep flights departing and arriving on schedule.
While this is a new tactic for American Airlines when it comes to their boarding process, no can dismiss the fact that if it does save time, the hassle of learning the procedure will be worthwhile. After all, everyone loves arriving at their destination on time!