It appears that BA is about to make some big changes to their boarding and carry-on baggage arrangements.
Over the past few weeks selected services from London have been testing new ways of boarding planes and it seems that BA has decided that it is time to make changes. The Fast Track queues can often be very long, and I suspect they have received negative feedback from their premium fare passengers.
The major changes are around the order of boarding. Premium Cabin beats out Executive Club status.
First they are going to board First and Club, then Executive Club Card Holders (in no particular order), and then World Traveller/EuroTraveller passengers. It also means that all card holders are now created equal with Bronze card holders getting the same priority as the invitation only Premier card holders.
The other changes relate to carry on bags:
– The second, personal item will be getting smaller – 40x30x15 down from 45x36x20 but you are guaranteed to get this on the plane (the new size is smaller than the Ryanair second item!)
– Except First or Club World passengers, everyone else gets a yellow tag on their second bag so that it must go under the seat in front of you.
– Where space runs out passengers will need to check their larger carry-on item.
It seems to be planned to happen in a couple of weeks time.
Love the blog, I’m an avid reader! My experience so far has been that on SH they announce CE with gold/emerald at the same time, then go down the tiers (silver/sapphire, bronze/ruby) then board by rows. On LH they announce First then CW (sometimes both together) then go down the tiers individually. On domestic they announce Business UK (obviously including anyone connecting to WTP or CW or F although I am not sure many realise it’s on their ticket!) with gold at the same time then go down the tiers. I may just be experiencing a hang-over from one of the recent ‘trials’ but the new signs at T5 would certainly be consistent with a ‘tiered’ approach to the tiers, so that gold would still board before silver etc.
@Chris – Thanks for the kind words. More articles to come this weekend and next week so please stay posted! The boarding sounds better than I had hoped! I am not travelling from Heathrow for about two weeks so won’t get a chance to see this in action.