Mini Rant

As a few may recall I have cut down my BA flying as much as possible. That said there are still some reasons to choose BA and I found myself in such a situation on Wednesday -ARN. Namely flight time.

Arrive to gate and take a seat - Priority line already stretches past the seating area in C gates. Friendly lady walking around yellow tagging and occasionally size checking a few bags.

As the queue grew the size check became requests for check in bags. I was initially approached, asked to check in, she then asked if I had any status (Silver) and then in a very friendly way said "oh thats fine, you know boarding has started" The queue at this point was back to the shops so I responded with "Yes, but I'm happy to sit, will join as priority is finishing.

True to my word I was the last priority boarder. Behind me a collection of around 70- 80 people.

I then get stopped at the desk and asked to check my bag as it was too big (put it in the gauge, fitted fine). Passport and also phone (boarding card) were then held onto unless I checked my bag. I protested saying "I appreciate the plane is full, why not check the bags of all these people behind me". (I accept here I have no knowledge of total bag capacity of the plane/number of people it takes to fill the overheads, but on a 200 odd seater to be out of space by 100ish seemed strange.

Lady finally relents and allows my bag on board.

Theoretically seating gives me a spare seat and the 5 rows around me all missing the middle person. Plenty of bag space all around. 2 people were stuck without space and bags moved to the front.

I'm not entirely sure of my argument here.

Is it a DYKWIA wanting shiny card people to get slightly special service or is it a bash BA thread for not enforcing luggage properly and stuffing their planes too full or is it simply a normal bad experience with air travel.

Surely there has to be some line that says after 150 people we have to check bags, or some communication from onboard that says bags nearly full please start checking. As an airline that handles thousands of flights, can they not have a fairly good idea of the exact number of bags that require to be checked on each flight to guarantee the remainder all fit.

They should not be targeting card holders but picking out non card holders IMO. As for holding on to your passport and boarding card....let's not start that one up again

All of this ^

Just to quote myself as this bit didn't make much sense, I attach an image of the overhead when I sat down, initially it was entirely empty and then right as boarding completed we had 2 people stuck.

I agree they need to come up with a better system, but I do feel sorry for the gate agents who are only following the system we have.

This discussion has been done to death in here, appreciate people still have strong feelings about it however; so I'll fetch my popcorn

Did they specifically refuse to return your passport and phone unless you checked your bag, was it made that conditional?

This is my top annoyance with BA lately. Let the card holders on without hassle and let them keep their bags! Why is this so hard!?

IIRC Ryanair has a 90 rollaboard cut off. Their 737s seat 189 people, so only half the plane can take one aboard, but then not everyone will have one. It's a fairly strict cut off, but the staff seem to manage it well.

I was only caught out by this once, but I only arrived at Stansted 20 minutes before departure so was exceedingly relieved to be boarding at all, even with my bag in the hold. Of course, once on board, there was actually a fair amount of room in the overheads, and a good 10-15 more big bags could have been brought on board. Baggage delivery was pretty swift in ATH, with bags coming around as people were walking past to the exit, so it didn't actually lose me any time.

The issue as OP sets it forth has nothing to do with status, but size of his bag. He had a factual dispute with the BA agent which the sizer is there to resolve. The bag either fits the sizer or it does not.

Presuming that the specific sizer in question meets the BA dimensions (let us presume that it is standard and does), there is simply no dispute.

The fact that the bag fits the OH or that there is space in the OH is not relevant to this immediate situation (although I can appreciate that BA, like most carriers, cuts off larger compliant cabin luggage when the OH bins are nearly full in order to avoid backup problems.

Holding the BP and phone seems silly. I can;t imagine that anyone would physically disobey a directive not to board or that, if that ocurred, BA does not have easy recourse.

Just to heckle from the auditorium, it was BP which was his phone and passport, they at the point had told the OP he can't take his luggage onboard, if he was then trying to leave the boarding area, would they have not given them back but as it was the OP would have try to board if they had given them back- am I wrong? They would need the OPs BP to check in the luggage, so I don't see this as holding it to ransom. That's certainly the debate on the previous thread over the last couple of weeks. Advice I gave then and standby is to get a paper BP and not give anyone your phone.

Anyway, popcorn refilled back to the cheap seats.

An airline employee holding a passenger's phone and/or passport for leverage or any reason unrelated to critical official duties such as scanning a mobile boarding pass or checking a visa is completely unacceptable. Personal property can now be held hostage in a very minor baggage dispute? Unbelievable.

I don't fly BA that often, but this stuck out to me. If a GA would not give me my phone or *passport* back over a bag, I would politely ask for a supervisor to solve the issue.

Overhead storage space has long been an issue particularly in winter months because of coats as well as bags...long before some asshat in Waterside thought HBO fares would be a clever idea, probably without having ever been on an actual short haul flight and appreciating the boarding carnage and customer dissatisfaction that driving behaviour towards hand baggage would cause. (or perhaps realising it, but full well knowing their annual bonus is not based on these measurements so they don't care). The BA office staff I knew back in the day all used their staff discounts on long haul J travel anyway so they would have no clue what the inside of an a3xx or 737 looked like. And that's my whole theory about what is driving the increasing number of rants we see on this forum: BA leaders and policy makers don't "eat their own dog food" and don't fully appreciate the consequences of their actions, which is putting front line staff under pressure to make up for it, and so , status members like the OP are unfortunately subjected to the shortcomings that inevitably arise. Not clever.

The Op said their bag did fit easily in the sizer.

Folks, just a reminder : if you've nothing useful to contribute to a thread other than your own opinion of its worthiness (or lack of), then there's really no need to keep interrupting the thread to tell us so.