Zone 1 or Group E? Making Sense of the New Boarding Rules (Published 2019) (2024)

For airlines, time on the ground is money. Financially speaking, planes only earn revenue for their companies when they are in the air, ferrying paying passengers. Which is one strong incentive to speed up boarding, deplaning and turnaround time.

That is why airlines continue to tinker with boarding procedures. United Airlines remodeled its boarding processes last fall to discourage passengers from lining up and clogging the boarding area. In January, Delta Air Lines expanded from having six numbered groups determine the order of boarding to eight color groups. Southwest Airlines is testing front- and rear-door boarding and deplaning at airports where the weather allows.

Boarding hierarchy didn’t matter much until about 10 years ago, when airlines began charging for checked bags. As the propensity to carry on luggage grew, so did the overhead bin wars. Early boarding, now aligned with frequent flier status and more expensive tickets, largely means avoiding them.

“Southwest maintains one reason it doesn’t assign seats is that it leads to faster boarding,” says Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and the founder of Atmosphere Research Group. “The problem is, at other airlines, you now have customers with frequent flier status who expect early boarding and have been educated for more than a decade that they’re special.”

That doesn’t stop airlines from toying with boarding plans and dangling line-jumping shortcuts, as the following chart on domestic boarding procedures suggests.

Alaska Airlines

Boarding by: Groups A through E. A and B have frequent flier status or premium class seats, C is in the back half of the main cabin, D is in the front and E is for “Saver” seats, which are the cheapest, largely nonrefundable and do not allow advance seat assignments.