Originally Posted by corporate-wage-slave

One key aspect of AA is that on services with known problems (short distance full flights with commuter traffic), the cabin crew will proactively shuffle the locker contents around to fill up the locker, then close the locker. When boarding is (say) three quarters complete, there may only be a handful of open lockers left. When they finally close the last one, or perhaps just before, a message goes from the cabin crew member to the gate agent. S/he will by this stage be on the jetty, and will tell the final passengers to leave their bags there for hold loading, rather than attempt to board with their main carry-on. This hits those in "Group 4", which is non status passengers with cheap tickets, but there's rarely a problem. The one known problem is that if a "Group 1" passenger, status and perhaps travelling First, arrives late to the gate then they, very rarely but sometimes, get caught up by this. This proactivity is missing on BA (and AA's cabin staffing levels are no better than BA).

I'm broadly supportive, with one proviso: I travel with one bag only, and it's well below the maxima size of the main bag. No second bag normally. That single bag is floppy, so can squeeze into all sorts of places. But it does have CWS' treasure trove of computer, electronics, car keys, identity paperwork and what not. So in theory this is at risk of going uninsured into the hold - there is no second bag to decant stuff. Given status and my usual cabin I'm not at realistic risk, but I flag it up as a problem.

Having said that, if BA simply enforced this new boarding procedure, issued labels for locker luggage (opposite to the yellow labels), and enforced both, I think the problem would be solved far better. So this is more than half way there.