dislikeofturningright

My experience here:

LHR to AMS - I was hand language only but went to the check-in deck to see if they would add sky priority to boarding card. The desks we very busy including the Skyprioirty queue so I gave up after 5 minutes which saw no movement in the queues. Headed through regular security, 25 minute queue, but not the end of the world. Used the No1 lounge, no issue with entry through the separate ITA card not shown on the boarding pass itself. They scanned the boarding card and overrode access with Skyteam Elite Plus option.
No1 Lounge not worth it to be honest, never the best lounge though.
SkyPriority Boarding not enforced so no disadvantage not having on boarding pass.

AMS to LHR - It appears there are two ways to access premium (non-paid) security:
- The first is directly where the barriers (I assume for those avoiding checking desks with HBO) where I assume they check your scanned boarding card to ensure you have the status or booking class.
- The second, which I used, even as HBO was up the escalator at the back of but within the skypriority check-in area. Access to that check-in area is checked by a member of staff where me and a guest were able to proceed by showing the ITA membership card. Whilst there was a boarding pass scanners thereafter, it did not seem to check status (as I assume accessing the skypriorty area was good enough). This was a real benifit as the queues for regular security looked about an 1hour, and we were through in 10 minutes.
Access to the lounge was fine, with a guest too, again had to be overriden by agent but no issues at all.
Skypriority boarding in place and given a busy flight this is the only time it would be useful to have the special boarding pass.

Overall a slightly better experience (especially at AMS) than I had expected.

I guess my final observation is that without paying for seats or status you get auto assigned seats which are not the best options, but for short flight no massive issue.