I couldn't agree more.

In particular, one thing that I really think is poorly organised by BA is that there is absolutely no priority service (for people entitled to priority service through phone line, check in, boarding, etc) in the IRROPS processing at most airport. At one point I gave the example of a long IRROP I suffered in Berlin last year where because we were in the lounge when it was announced, all "premium" passengers (business class, BAEC GGL, G, S, OW E and S, etc) were handled last and after the longest queue.

So by the time we were considered, many of us could not even be accommodated on the same day even though most statusless passengers had been accommodated on an LH flight roughly at the same time as their original departure!

Even AF-KL is much better and always have a Skypriority line in such cases, and to me, the no1 point of status is to get the best possible arrangement in the case of IRROPS which invariably happen to me from time to time (I fly 200+ flights/year so it is perfectly normal that "some" will go wrong and I accept that) but BA are comparatively the least good at providing that to me despite GGL status, which I find disappointing.

Sure, some people will say that I am spoilt and why should my case matter more than that of a person flying only once in Y, but the truth of the matter is that to me, this is precisely what status should all be about - getting the best arrangement that the airline is willing to offer when travel incidents which are not the responsibility of the passenger happen.

So to clarify, while I was stressing out the "risk" - mostly because you never know how other people would interpret things otherwise when they bump into this thread in a few months - I can only restate that I completely agree with your approach and would do the exact same myself when the line for hotel would mean that I would have to waste hours in a queue. If it is a few people, of course, I'll wait. I would add for the sake of comparison that I have never had to do this with AF or KL precisely because of the priority line at most airport counters for eligible passengers while in BA's case, most airports do not offer that.