United Airlines Is Changing the Boarding Order on Its Planes: Who Will Benefit and Why It Should Save Time

There won't be any changes for people in the pre-boarding group, first class and premium class

United Airlines is changing up the way passengers board its planes — and those in window seats may take priority.

An internal memo from United Airlines obtained by the New York Times revealed that passengers in economy class will experience the difference.

According to the memo, once the changes are implemented, people will board based on whether they are seated in a window, aisle or middle seat as opposed to boarding by section. The new boarding process is known as “WILMA,” which is an acronym for "window-middle-aisle."

Here's everything you need to know.

What is the benefit of this plan?

WILMA will help cut down on the amount of times passengers who are already seated need to get up in the aisle to let others in, per the memo. This should reduce the overall time it takes to board the plane, getting passengers seated and in the air more efficiently. In tests, United said, the WILMA method saved about 2 minutes during boarding.

Who boards first now?

There won’t be any changes for passengers in first class and other premium boarding categories. They will still board before all other economy passengers.

Those with window seats, exit row seats and standby seats will board right after the first and premium classes, followed by those in middle seats, then those in aisle seats. Many have observed that this could mean on flights with limited overhead bin space, those in middle and aisle seats are more likely to have to gate check their bag if space runs out, giving an additional advantage to window seat ticket holders.

Carry-on restricted basic economy passengers and customers with no boarding group number on their boarding pass will board the plane last.

Related: Hawaiian Airlines Assigns Seats by Passenger Size on Flights Between American Samoa and Honolulu

What about families and groups traveling together?

As for those traveling in groups or families, they will be assigned the highest boarding number together, with the exception of those in economy. 

And people with small children?

There will also be no changes for people in the pre-boarding group, which includes travelers with disabilities, active-duty military and families traveling with young children.

How much time will it save?

United Airlines said that through its previous WILMA tests, it has saved  up to two minutes of boarding time per flight. The process was tested at four domestic locations and one major hub, per Associated Press.

Related: United Airlines Changes Policy for Displacing Passengers

Has this been attempted before?

This reportedly isn’t the first time that the airline has tried the WILMA boarding process, having previously used it before switching in 2017 to boarding in the traditional front-to-back process used by several other domestic airlines today, per Conde Nast Traveler.

The outlet also reported that United Airlines noted that it had seen boarding times increase by two minutes using the front-to-back boarding process since 2019 and was looking for a way to cut that down.

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When does it start?

United Airlines is set to launch WILMA on domestic flights and some international flights next week on Oct. 26, per AP.

Have other airlines implemented this successfully?

Other airlines including Lufthansa have already switched to using a version of WILMA. Lufthansa was one of the more recent airlines to move over to WILMA in 2019.

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