FlyerTalk Evangelist, Ambassador, British Airways Executive Club
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Somewhere between 0 and 13,000 metres high
Programs: AF/KL Life Plat, BA GGL+GfL, ALL Plat, Hilton Diam, Marriott Gold, blablablah, etc
Posts: 30,531
Experienced this mess today on my full 321 flight. People had started queuing well before I arrived at the gate effectively blocking access to multiple gate. Flight being full customers were invited to check hand luggage but basically had no path to the gate agents adding chaos to chaos.
when boarding finally started, an agent bravely went up the queue like one of those baby salmons swimming upstream trying to ask anyone not in group 1 to move away (that was >90% of the people in there) and conversely trying to invite those of us in group 1 to make our way to the gate which I managed since I only have a backpack and my body is still pre-Xmas food but of course everyone asked to stay sat (as repeatedly asked for n the announcements) or stand aside looks as those invited to board as though we were done mega criminals because in their eyes we were jumping a queue that should not have been there in the first place and was simply inconveniencing everyone and slowing down boarding majorly.
The problem with The average Briton is that once they’ve started queuing you can’t make them un-queue, so those pillars inviting people from two groups to queue when they effectively shouldn’t is the equivalent of telling a kid they can’t open their Christmas present till Xmas day whilst leaving it on their bedside table for a couple of weeks before the date! Chaos guaranteed…