Airlines are constantly tweaking the process of how a flight boards in order to best maximize the opportunity for the plane to depart on time.
Now Frontier Airlines has come up with an innovative way that might just change the entire process.
Frontier will no longer list the departure time on its boarding passes. Instead, the airline will list two other times - when boarding for the flight begins and when boarding for the flight ends.
"It's part of our emphasis to ensure an on-time departure for our customers," Frontier spokesman Jim Faulkner told USA Today. "If the door closes 10 minutes before scheduled departure, customers still have time to stow their bags, get their seatbelts fastened and get settled in so that the plane can push back from the gate on time or before."
It's so simple yet quite ingenious. Departure times were certainly helpful, but passengers were often in the dark on when, exactly, the gate agents would lock the jetbridge door and stop the boarding process.
"If we're closing the door at the same time as the scheduled departure time, we're already running behind," Faulkner said.
No other U.S. airline has eliminated departure time from its respective boarding pass. But as one expert told USA Today, "I don't see a downside" to moving to a system in which boarding passes now list time to board and when boarding ends.
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