A Frustrating And Unusual American Airlines Boarding Experience

American Airlines is trying to improve its passenger experience, and become more competitive with Delta and United. That’s great, and I’m rooting for them. While big product investments are nice, often it’s focusing on the basic things that makes the biggest difference.

I want to give an example of some unnecessary and totally avoidable friction to the passenger experience, which I witnessed on a flight from Tampa (TPA) to Miami (MIA) a couple of days ago (admittedly it’s not the most memorable thing from the past couple of days, but this is a travel blog)…

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Flight boarding all groups at posted boarding time

The other night, I arrived at the gate for my American flight one minute before scheduled boarding time, and was confused to find that they were already boarding all groups, nearly all passengers were already onboard, and they were forcing all passengers to gate check carry-on bags.

At first I thought I just got my time mixed up, and that the mistake was on me. But nope, I had timed it correctly. For what it’s worth, this was an Airbus A319 departing at 6:59PM, and boarding was scheduled for 6:24PM, 35 minutes before departure. The A319 is American’s smallest narrow body plane, so 35 minutes should be more than enough time to board the aircraft.

Fortunately I didn’t have a carry-on bag, so the gate checking of bags wasn’t an issue for me. But still, I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around why they started boarding so early. Because a minute after I boarded, we just sat there for another 20 minutes, before some of the late arriving passengers showed up.

Airline reliability is important, and that’s not just about departing on-time, but also about trying to stick to a schedule. If you tell people you’re going to start boarding 35 minutes before departure, then that’s when boarding should start, in my opinion. Boarding early without any operational logic makes no sense to me, since it just causes this culture of unnecessarily crowding the gate area early.

A gate checked bag fiasco with a surprising ending

I witnessed an interaction on this flight that I found quite surprising. At the door, the flight attendant was greeting people with “how are you?” I simply nodded, because I wasn’t in a position to answer that without unloading, and couldn’t muster up the insincerity to say “great” (though I guess in the US, it’s a question we ask and answer without thought, and it’s just another way of saying “hi”).

Meanwhile the guy behind me answered with “horrible,” when asked. At first I thought he was joking, but nope, he genuinely claimed to be doing horribly, because they forced him to gate check his bag. In fairness, the guy was seated in Main Cabin Extra, which comes with preferred boarding, so I imagine he was screwed over by the boarding process starting early.

When he got to his seat, he noticed empty space in the overhead bin above his seat (and throughout many parts of the plane). So he went up to the flight attendant at the door, and explained there was still lots of space in the overhead bin, and asked them to get his bag.

I thought to myself “yeah, as if they’re going to do that.” Unsurprisingly, they said it couldn’t be done. But then the situation took a turn. He said “my laptop is even there, with a lithium ion battery.”

I’m not sure if this guy was being strategic, but I must say… well played, sort of. Suddenly they took him seriously, and asked for the information related to the bag. So they went to get his bag, and brought it to the door, but then it got even more interesting — “you need to take out your laptop, but you still need to gate check the bag.”

He was dumbfounded, pointing out that there was space in the overhead bin above his seat. Like, why would they force him to gate check the bag when there was in fact space? Clearly they just didn’t want to give in, and didn’t want to backtrack. The guy kept arguing with the crew, asking them give him one reason he couldn’t place the bag in the overhead bin.

At first I thought “you’re never going to win arguing with a crew, this isn’t going to end well.” But to my surprise, his persistence paid off, and he was allowed to place the bag in the overhead bin.

Bottom line

I think all too often we frame a good passenger experience in terms of whether there are seat back TVs, or what champagne is served in premium cabins. But often the single most important thing is just creating as frictionless and reliable of an experience as possible.

To me, reliability doesn’t just mean operating flights on-time, but it means operating in line with expectations. There’s no reason that flights should board before the scheduled time, especially when you’re selling early access to the overhead bins as a feature of certain tickets or elite status. That’s also true when you combine it with the proactive and overly aggressive gate checking of bags that we see.

This is of course minor in the scheme of things, but it was interesting to see such an unnecessarily complicated boarding process. I think airlines underestimate the extent to which this kind of stuff leaves people with a bad impression. I was surprised when the passenger actually managed to get them to retrieve his bag and place it in the bin, though, when he found space.