When it’s no longer politically correct to call it a “Boarding Pass” the next logical step is the “Departure Management Card” by United.
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When it’s no longer politically correct to call it a “Boarding Pass” the next logical step is the “Departure Management Card” by United.
coudal
on 02 May 07I suppose they staple your “Personal Portable Storage System Tracking Documents” to that.
Rudiger
on 02 May 07One has to wonder what thought process occurred that resulted in “Departure Management Card” being chosen as the best possible choice…
Rick
on 02 May 07It’s a bad name, but I assume the change is because with increased security, having one of these cards is in no way a “pass” to “board” the airplane. There are many more hurdles to jump through.
Seth Aldridge
on 02 May 07The next thing you know they’ll call ‘Peanuts’ something like ‘Hunger Management Containers’
Tracy
on 02 May 07I suppose they staple your “Personal Portable Storage System Tracking Documents” to that.
Which they slip into a Travel Document Management Assistance Container, before they direct you to the Designated Concourse Travel Staging and Communication Zone.
I guess this is part of the new “a la carte” travel trend. You might pay for the pretzels, but the corporate-speak is free!
Chris Busse
on 02 May 07I saw “Departure Management Card” in the title and thought someone was getting a pink slip, not a boarding pass.
Paul
on 02 May 07I print boarding passes from United all the time (when their site works.)
My understanding is that your card’s not a boarding pass at all. You’ll get a boarding pass at the airport; this is like an “almost boarding pass”.
Kevin
on 02 May 07I used to work at United Airlines and if I’m not mistaken, the Departure Management Card is for standby flights. If you are taking your original flight you still receive a boarding pass.
I haven’t worked there in a couple months so I may be wrong about this.
Jake Walker
on 02 May 07“People add extra words when they want things to sound more important than they really are. Boarding process, sounds important. It isn’t. It’s just a bunch of people getting on an airplane. People like to sound important. Weathermen on television talk about shower activity. Sounds more important than showers. I even heard one guy on CNN talk about a rain event. Swear to god. He said, “Louisiana’s expecting a rain event.” I thought, “Holy @#%$! I hope I can get tickets to that!” Emergency situation. News people like to say, “Police have responded to an emergency situation.” No they haven’t. They’ve responded to an emergency. We know it’s a situation. Everything is a situation.”
—George Carlin
And there’s more where that came from…
Adam
on 02 May 07I think it is due to the fact that you didn’t have a seat assignment. If you did have a seat assignment, you would have a boarding pass. Since you can’t board until you have a seat assignment, they gave you this instead, which is really just a printout of your itinerary.
gabriel friedman
on 02 May 07A few months back Harry Shearer had a piece on “Le Show” about an airline considering selling ads on the various articles used in the security process; plastic tubs, chairs, etc…
That’s strange enough, but the language the airline used was stranger: among other things, they called the chairs where you sit to put your clothes back on “recomposure stations” or some such.
Funny, but also a little scary.
Doug
on 02 May 07On Monday I flew from Orlando to DC and was looking at the boarding pass/departure card (older version). When were these first designed? Why are they so arcaic? Ever tried to quickly glance and find out the information you need for your flight? Seat location? Gate? Man it is harder than ever. Glad to see an attempt at some sort of information design
They now have introduced something called “zones”. The order they load the plane. Great idea, prevents the huge backup that once resulted by everyone trying to board from back to front (or front to back).
I have flown a lot in the past couple months and been very disapointed with the whole system. My feeling coming out of all of this is that the airline industry doesn’t really care about their customers. We are just contributors to their bottom line. I am sure their are exceptions, but I continually am running into delays/cancellations with little or no effort from the airline to inform or compensate. Am I the only one?
j
on 02 May 07tell me someone didn’t just quote george carlin.
Dustin
on 02 May 07It’s been called Departure Management for years. My mom worked at United for 35 years and she always talked about DM.
When I would travel – she would say stuff like “Dusty, be sure to go to the counter and check to make sure you’re on the DM list”.
They have tons of funny terminology at United. BP’s (Boarding Priority – I think I was a BP8 when I used to fly standby). Then the employees had all kinds of funny stuff.
My mom used to come home and say “I got WOP”. Which means “WithOut Pay” – meaning they let her leave early but they weren’t paying her for the hours she wouldn’t work.
I say WOP this with a BP7 on your own DM list.
Chris
on 02 May 07DM cards have been used for years. You get one of those when you check in for at least two reasons: no seat assignment and stand-by.
Killian
on 02 May 07It is called a Departure Management Card if they have overbooked your flight and you can not be assigned a seat!
It is still called a Boarding Pass if you have a reserved seat (no matter where you checked in).
@Dustin was probably flying standby because your mom was a United Employee so you were not reserved a seat (or had to pay).
The boarding priority is done by just about every airline and it determines if you get a seat on an overbooked flight. I think they take into account if you are returning home or going somewhere and your airline loyalty (miles, trips, etc…) so that you can get that coveted last seat.
If anyone knows anything else about these secretive airline priorities then let me know!
Anonymous Coward
on 02 May 07Next time, Jason, try knowing something about the topic you’re posting about before posting. If you had a seat assignment, you would have been able to get a boarding pass, but since you didn’t have a seat assignment, you couldn’t very well board the plane (without additional information – like the seat assignment, on something that would be called a boarding pass), now could you? Nice try.
dracolytch
on 02 May 07“try knowing something about the topic you’re posting about before posting”
But he DOES know something about the topic he’s posting about. He’s posting about travelling, and is probably as/more experienced travelling as the average joe/jill.
The fact is, a Departure Management Card is a crappy name. It’s 3 words, lots of syllables, and conveys no meaning.
“Flight Information Card” would at least tell you what it is.
~D
Brian
on 02 May 07DM cards are probably over 50 years old. It’s a systemic failure of the airline industry that they expose names like this, even today.
The analog to software is probably things like “Error Code 54003” It means nothing to anyone not versed in the inner workings of the system.
I can give them a little leeway only by virtue of the fact that it’s use was institutionalized before a usability as a profession was even a sparkle in Jeffery Zeldman’s eye.
I had the priveledge of web-iffying this document a few years ago for United. Believe me when I say that I tried as hard as possible to add some sense, order, and IA to the layout and design. When they hand you a document (i.e. the paper ticket) that’s still printed on the grandfather to the dot-matrix printer, and say “make it look like this”, you know you’re not going to have a good week of Mondays.
Going against a 50 year old convention in a behemoth company like United takes no less than buy in from 15 mid-level executives.
michael
on 02 May 07“If you had a seat assignment, you would have been able to get a boarding pass, but since you didn’t have a seat assignment, you couldn’t very well board the plane.”
Dumb statement. It implies that “Duh, you can’t call it a boarding pass because it doesn’t have a seat assignment, so OF COURSE it should be called a “Departure Management Card.” Some airlines don’t even have seat assignments, yet they have boarding passes (I guess you should learn about the topic you’re posting about before posting). It doesn’t change the fact that DMC is a dumb, corporate-speak name for a relatively simple object.
Now you can return to your job as ‘sanitation engineer’, or perhaps ‘former bovine burn-avoidance specialist’.
Patrick
on 02 May 07Maybe I’m just out of touch but why the heck is “boarding pass” not politically correct? As far as political correctness goes I wish their was less of it as well as less sensitive ninnies.
Benjy
on 02 May 07Given the actual odds of getting to board some United flights even when holding a ticket (we were on flights overbooked by 30-40 people in Dec/Jan), I’d say departure management card is perhaps more applicable.
Jenny
on 02 May 07It’s not just having an assigned seat, it’s having a seat all. Other airlines probably don’t a standby ticket a boarding pass either. It’s still a bad name though. And it’s certainly lazy of Jason to just post it without even knowing what it was. At the very least update the post and admit the mistake.
Jenny
on 02 May 07That was meant to follow michael’s post. And @patrick: it’s not politically incorrect. Jason was looking for justification of his assumptions.
MI
on 02 May 07The infamous “Departure Management Card” was presented with no explanation after checking in for a flight that was reserved ahead of time and clicking a button that says “Print Boarding Documents”. United lists the flight status as “confirmed” but gives no additional information explaining what a DMC is, and there is no mention of such an object anywhere in their FAQs. Clearly there was no cause for confusion.
Jenny
on 02 May 07Great, maybe you should make a post about how United does a bad job about describing what a DMC is, not a completely inaccurate post about how they are renaming boarding passes. A quick google search would have revealed that even though you booked it ahead of time, there was some change in the flight status that moved you to standby.
Brad Gessler
on 02 May 07A departure management card is not a boarding pass.
You’ll get a departure management card if you’re on stand-by, you’re on the upgrade list, or your seat is not assigned yet. The latter might occur if United has to swap out equipment because of mechanical issues or availability. If they can’t find the same plane to replace the original it can throw off all of the seating assignments.
While a departure management card isn’t a boarding pass, it is a worthless piece of paper. I flew 160,000 miles last year on 90+ flights and a United gate agent has never asked to see my departure management card.
Jason: I’m just curious, who has the highest status at 37sig? Any 1k-ers over there? Or better yet… which one of you is a Global Services member?
George
on 02 May 07As someone who has spent a lot of time riding the friendly skies on United, I have gotten plenty of DM cards. One gets them while waiting for an upgrade to clear, when flying standby, or when a seat assignment can’t be made at the time of check-in. That’s why in the top right section of the DM card it clearly says “Please wait in the gate area to obtain your seat assignment or upgrade”.
It’s not a boarding pass. It’s simply proof that you’ve checked in at so-and-so time with so-and-so priority so that if operations go to computer unassisted mode, people can still be handled according to the correct policy.
Anonymous Coward
on 03 May 07“Some airlines don’t even have seat assignments, yet they have boarding passes (I guess you should learn about the topic you’re posting about before posting).”
The paper you’re issued can be called a boarding pass only if you can use it to get on a plane: if the airline doesn’t do seating assignments (like Southwest), then you can get on the plane without a seat assignment, so a boarding pass need not contain a seat assignment. I didn’t say it was exclusively about having been issued a seat assignment: on United, you need a seat assignment to board a plane, so without one, you cannot have a boarding pass. It’s about being able to get on the plane – which is why it’s called a boarding pass.
Andy Cunningham
on 03 May 07I think I’d be insisting on being given a boarding card instead.
JF
on 03 May 07Great, maybe you should make a post about how United does a bad job about describing what a DMC is, not a completely inaccurate post about how they are renaming boarding passes
I was wrong, my fault.
I do believe “Departure Management Card” is a pretty silly name, however. It sounds like something that belongs inside a company’s box of jargon, not on a public facing document given to passengers who paid for a ticket to fly.
Anyway, sorry for the initial factual error. I should have looked into it first.
Skuli
on 03 May 07And on a side note, why do so many airlines call it an itinerary number when in fact most of them contain more letters than numbers?
Chris
on 03 May 07Employee travel FAQ for United http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,51084,00.html?jumpLink=%2FemployeeECOfaq
Greg
on 04 May 07I saw “Departure Management Card” in the title and thought someone was getting a pink slip, not a boarding pass.
You and me both. I was hoping for a company’s hilariously terrible firing letter, not a hilariously terrible not-quite-boarding-pass.
Dave Marcus
on 04 May 07Uh, excuse me .... you did NOT show a boarding pass so don’t bitch that is ain’t called a boarding pass. Asking that a spade be called a spade is one thing but you’re going a leetle far in complaining that a pot isn’t called a kettle.
B
on 05 May 07You’re excused, Dave. If you read just a few comments before yours you’ll see Jason apologized for the factual error. Now you’re the one who sounds like an idiot.
Eric G
on 07 May 07“Departure Management” is United-speak for STANDBY.
This isn’t a boarding pass, notice there is no seat number.
This discussion is closed.