Originally Posted by Retron

I had a wry grin flying to Tokyo (in F) earlier this year, with my friend. He was excited about seeing Group 1 on our boarding passes, and assumed he'd be one of the first on as there were only 8 seats in F. As I said to him, just sit back and enjoy the show!

Group 0 was called, a handful of people shuffled through. Group 1 was called and what seemed like half the people waiting all got up and dashed for the queue! We joined the back of the queue (which was, in reality, about 30 deep) and noted the people in front of us had multiple "gold" tags on their hand luggage - made me grin, as their status was clearly very important to them. We were the second and third people respectively in the cabin once we boarded.

The really amusing thing about all this is the way things have changed over the years. 25 years ago the idea was you'd be among the last to board if you were travelling business or first class, the idea being that you'd spend as long as possible in the lounge, then stroll onto the plane through an empty gate. In the intervening years that's been lost, albeit it's still possible. My first business flight was with Air India to New York, in 1999, and they actually told you to wait in the lounge at Heathrow - they would call you when it was time to board. Yes, I was fretting about how late it was getting, but it was of course fine.