It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of United’s recent passenger experience upgrades.
The airline has been on a roll with refreshed cabins, better Wi-Fi, improved catering, and a generally more premium feel across the entire operation.
But this latest change? It leaves me shaking my head.
Earlier this week, I flew into Newark and noticed something I’d never seen before upon landing: a completely redesigned layout on the flight status boards (or flight information displays, FIDs, in formal airline speak).
Gone is the classic row-by-row table arranged alphabetically by destination, aka the format used at just about every major airport in the world.
In its place is a new box-style grid that technically shows all the same information, plus gate direction and walking distance, but in a layout that’s both wildly confusing and hard to read.
Each flight now gets its own individual box. The destination city, flight number, and gate appear at the top in white text with a blue background.
Directly below that is the departure time and gate direction — this time in black text on a white background.
Then there’s the strangest part: a vertical, color-coded status indicator to the left of each box.
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No box means on time, a yellow box means delayed, and a red box means canceled. But the text is rotated sideways, meaning you need to tilt your head to read it.
I’ve been to more airports than I can count, and this is the first time I’ve seen a flight board designed this way. United, for its part, says that this new display is available at all hubs and line stations. For now, line stations don’t receive the wayfinding details.
After studying the new displays for a few minutes, I realized there’s probably a reason airports don’t do this — it’s hard to read, unintuitive to scan, and seemingly frustrating to use.
And it wasn’t just me.
The next morning, I was back at Newark for another trip and watched multiple travelers stare blankly at the monitors, trying to decipher where their flights were. One passenger saw me recording video and said, “Yeah, this isn’t great.”
I nodded, hit publish on my Instagram Reel, and politely asked my United sources to please bring back the classic table format.
In my opinion, this is definitely an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” type situation.
The good news? United tells me that “we’re planning to roll out some additional design changes by the end of the year.”
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