British Airways recently announced a new boarding arrangement for its flights. Whilst the email inferred that all elite’s would be boarded at the same time. My original post about the changes can be seen here.
However, as you can see above, new signs have been acquired for the gates at Heathrow. This certainly suggests that there will be running order of boarding, split in to seven groups. That of course is before they board World/Euro Traveller.
Well based on my experience last week the system isn’t working.
When I arrived at the gate, there were already people in the Fast Track boarding lane. The guy in front had a EuroTraveller boarding pass and a Gold Card.
Boarding time came and as I was sitting in Club I was trying to work out if I could get past his luggage. Of course resolved that dilemma for me by calling ‘Club Europe and Gold Card holders’. What?
Well it seems that there are numerous variations of the new arrangements. There is a Flyertalk.com thread about how the plans are being implemented and it’s about as patchy as in London for my flight.
What’s your experience of the new scheme? Did it work for you?
Last night (Friday 21st Aug) flying LHR-PRG – usual announcement for children, those who need extra time, club and gold/silver. But I was happy with that as I was Gold but in economy.
I actually think frequent flyers should board first as they know the drill, where to sit, where and how to put their bags and keep out of the way. Plenty of club passengers decide that as they’ve paid a lot for the ticket they’ll hold up those who need to get past and go behind the curtain.
I wish they’d just use boarding groups as AA do – print it really clearly on the BP/mobile app BP too. Silver and Gold should still get higher priority too.
Just flew lhr-ams yesterday. The boarding for frequent flyers seemed to work well (they only called 2-3 groups). Main cabin boarding was a mess. They go by row but don’t actually enforce it. Boarding was very slow.