News Flash … United Airlines Has a Good Idea!

Jim Ott wrote an interesting article in last week’s Aviation Week and Space Technology called Surly Skies about … what else, airline travel.

He said, “Any adaptation airlines make to counter the negatives of air travel seem to be useless … amid the turmoil, customer loyalty is disappearing …”

Occasionally though, an airline develops a good idea and this time I think United has done it.

Many of you are probably thinking I’ve lost my mind because my relationship with United has never been what I would call warm and fuzzy. Let’s just say I view United as an inconsistent service provider and leave it at that.

Here’s the Beef

We all realize how annoying boarding and deplaning are at the airport right? So what if someone recognized the fact that airliners have more than one door to use for boarding? Imagine the time it might save getting on and off if they actually used more of the doors?

United has been testing this for awhile and found the process at Denver cut boarding time almost in half. But the carrier recently abandoned the practice because the dual jetway got away from someone and banged up an airplane.

The one item the airline does seem to be missing though is that the only way to safely board the airplane through the rear door is on a jetway.

Please United … try some stairs. This seems to work successfully in Europe. Why not here?

Most of us would be glad to go up and down stairs if it sped up the boarding process. If the weather is bad, go back to one jetway.

And you must have a spare body somewhere who could watch the boarding process up the stairs for a few minutes each trip if it got the airplane organized faster.

Now’s your chance to write the United folks a quick note and tell them not to give up on dual boarding because passengers would love it, especially when we’re trying to make a connection.

One tip though when you write the United folks … include this as your first sentence … “This note does NOT contain a complaint. Please read.”

Technorati tags: United Airlines, airline passengers, Aviation Week, Jim Ott, passenger boarding