On my recent flights to and from Athens, the group 1-3 boarding was truly chaotic and this inevitably led to some very heated interactions in the queues between passengers. On top of this, Gold passengers were being included in the hand luggage check in hunt at the gate in Athens with one agent politely saying, "we respect you are a Gold member but Gold passengers are not exempt from the restrictions on the size of hand luggage". To be fair some of the size of hand luggage was truly ridiculous and it felt right that these passengers were being told their bags were excessively oversized.

I was in group 1 and was not shocked at how many people tried to queue jump by assuming their group 1 status was more important than everyone else - but they were politely told to join the back of the queue. Better still were the number of passengers who delayed boarding because one of the travelling party was not actually in group 1 when this group was called forward. One guy said his wife should be allowed to board with him in group 1 but the gate agents rightly told him he was welcome to join her in her allocated group 9 if they needed to board at the same time. And then again another passenger argued his travelling companion should be boarding with him in group 1 despite the gate agent loudly announcing "she is group 7 not group 1". And the rules were enforced, quite simply due to the volume of passengers genuinely in group 1-3.
​​​​​​Both the outbound and return flights had chaotic boarding and there was clearly tension in the queues due to both the volume of priority customers, sense of entitlement and a misplaced assumption that groups 1-3 are exclusive. I would estimate 50+ people in the group 1-3 lane on the outbound to Athens.

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