livious

I had to glorious opportunity to witness a first with SAS (at least within Scandinaiva)...a serious attempt at priority boarding. Roll your eyes if you will, but it was a beauty to behold.

While trying to gate check a bag flying CPH-ARN-HEL, I had to wait a bit as the ground staff wanted to start priority boarding. As we all have grown used to, there was a horde of anxious Scandinavians waiting to use the automatic scanners. My ears were drawn to a new twist in the boarding announcement, something about Zone A and B will board first. Imagine my surprise that I missed a new feature on my boarding pass...the Zone column.

My fellow flyers, after years of ignoring the pre-boarding announcement, flooded forward as normal, but the initial wave was DENIED by the scanner. I will admit that it was a sight to witness the shock on the faces of the people being denied, the anger at the people behind them and the ground staff trying to inform the mass of bodies that, yes, Plus and Gold members will be boarding first. Stagnation ensued, which meant my bag was tagged and I was allowed to sneak around the automatic scanners.

The flight staff were rather taken aback at the lack of people boarding...only a handful came through in the first 10 minutes. I told them they were enforcing priority boarding and got a big smile from the flight attendant. However, boarding was rather efficient as there was a steady flow of people into the cabin. In the end it was a big improvement from what usual occurs.

Has anyone else experienced the new system? I saw nothing of the sort flying CPH-ARN-OER and back on Thursday/Friday. There is noting listed for Zone for ARN-HEL, only CPH-ARN, so perhaps this was either a trial run or new function?!? Either way, I loved it! I am going to frame my boarding pass and tell my grandchildren tales of how I was there when it first worked

livious

And back to the usual mess at ARN, although people were much more patient in letting the first wave though (must have bee a large group of elites :-

view

I haven�t seen this yet, but sounds like they should roll it out across the board. After getting burnt a few times people usually get with the program.

FT Guest xyzpdq

I have actually seen priority boarding enforced quite a few times the past 6 months. Pretty consistently in the US stations - and and quite frequently also out of CPH. Seems to a bit more lax at ARN (not that is an airport I often go to).

helosc

Flew out of CPH on Thursday.
No mention of zones but staff was strictly enforcing priority boarding - many announcements and requests for people to move out of the way.
Don't know about the automatic scanners but people were denied boarding at the manual priority gate.

AlicorporateUK

At least in CPH, I've noticed it all pretty much depends on the actual gate and relative set-up. Taking as a quick example D1/4 (and other similar gates, needless to say), self-boarding scanners are not installed and, despite the early announcement that only P/G/D are allowed to board at first, people will normally push to get through and, at that point, whoever is managing the boarding process will no longer give a toss. Moreover, boarding always seems to start a good 10/15 minutes before the aircraft is actually ready, resulting in over 100 people trapped like sardines in a relatively tiny space, waiting for the door to the jet-bridge to open. I find the attempt of the gate assistant eventually opening the door and shouting "Plus, Golds and Diamonds only!" quite hilarious as some passengers would literally start to push in order to be amongst the first to step on the aircraft. In my experience of flying out of CPH on a weekly basis (omitting to mention extra-Schengen flights as passport checks come into play), priority boarding gets enforced pretty much 99% of times at those gates where self-boarding scanners are installed i.e. A/B.

G

livious

The real difference for me was that the automatic scanners blocked the people trying to sneak through, so the zone concept must have been inplemented in the IT. Just to note, it was gate B3 at CPH.

Asking the gate staff to enforce priority boarding is another matter and simply relies on people to listen and wait. Normally it is a big fail. In best case a few can board before the mob blocks the gate area. In most cases the staff just lets everyone through to clear the area.

I guess the problem will be rolling this out to airports/gates without the automatic scanners. However, even the Americans have learned to accept the various lines based on zones...so there is hope. SAS just needs to keep working on it and having staff only allow pre-boarding to those that have paid for or earned it. I think the zone concept will help guide the masses.

oliver2002

Its hillarious that the same who want to be on the aircraft asap also want to get off asap once we land, as if the aircraft is on fire.

This zone concept is probably coded together with the HBO fare concept, so the consultants probably convinced Eivind that you can get checked luggage fee revenue with the zones...

FlyingMoose

I've seen it once at ARN, posted the experience in another thread. The ground staff pensioner didn't blush once when sending people back that where not eligible to board. She let Diamond, Gold and Plus board first and once all of those where on-board she continued with the rest. A few minutes into the process when the first 10-15 non-eligible people where send back, the rest of the Swedish sheeple adjusted as they got to queue which is something Swedes love to do.

It was a smooth well executed no-nonsense priority boarding exercise that should be the standard for every flight. I've unfortunately not witnessed even a similar attempt since. Lack of enforcement and guidance from SAS as usual.

I still don't understand why this is such a big problem considering how Swedes usually follow every rule to the letter (beyond absurdness) and they also usually don't have a problem to tell people what they can or can't do. Waiting a few minutes for Elites to finish boarding shouldn't be an issue.

KiwiRob

The gate staff when SK had Moscow flights were very good at enforcing priority boarding, many times I'd seen arrogant scando's turffed out of the queue and told to go to the back of the line.

oliver2002

Maybe put one of those number machines at each gate and ask people to take a number and sit down

livious

The technology is really the key for this. I fully understand that the gate staff don't want to sit there and bark at people trying to sneak on early. Why rely on people when the machine can sort it out? Even the manual scanners can just show red and make it clear that the person should not be boarding early. A few times being caught should shame most people into waiting.

The same could be said for priority luggage. Perhaps SAS could up with some sort of tag, perhaps even a bright pink tag, that the handlers could notice and give priority to?

CPH-Flyer

The NH staff in NRT has always been very good at managing priority boarding.

I have also noticed that LHR T2 seems to run with a two line concept, one line for priority and one for non priority boarding.

This works so much easier when the gates have space for tensa barrier lines. Though I guess a certain amount of enforcing over time will get people used to waiting until their turn is called. In the US people seem to understand the concept, however they are also consequently turned away if boarding out of turn....
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Tennen

Out of curiosity, what are the boarding zones?

Zone A = Business? Diamond?
Zone B = Plus? Gold?

FT Guest xyzpdq

KLM tried that - and to it mildly it was not the best idea around :-)