Smirnoff

Priority boarding calls for shorthaul at T5 seems to be the exception, rather than the rule IME.

Last Fridays BA662 (a 767 flight) was simply announced as "we are now ready for boarding....". And there was just one snaking roped-off walkway to enter at A11.

nobbyclark

Except to try and blag overhead locker space that is actually overhead your seat, as opposed to half-way down the plane because (a) some plebs have dumped their bags in the first available locker or (b) the other people in your row have umpteen carry-ons.

I was waiting to board a flight in Dusseldorf last year when a passenger strode to the front of the queue and demanded to know why GCHs had not been called to board first. He was obviously in the "Option 1" camp; I'm an "Option 3" myself.

Sixth Freedom

Me too.

I consider that once I am on the plane I have nothing more to do other than wait until I reach my destination.

I am absolved of all responsibility, which I find is a nice feeling to have when travelling.

Stez

Me thrice.

There were certainly no boarding by row numbers when I boarded a SH Europe flight this morning. Skillful timing in approaching the gate from the lounge meant that I was pretty much near front of the queue without the prolonged waiting around at the gate.

Gaz

There is never priority boarding on domestics out of T5 - I've done LHR-MAN out of T5 countless times and cannot remember it once.

It's ok though, as once you've wandered down from the lounge, most of the PAX are still seated, and if you can be bothered to stand up for 5-10 minutes until boarding is called, you'll be one of the first on anyway.

Going MAN-LHR though, if you leave the lounge at the first boarding call, you'll find yourself right at the back of an extremely long queue. There's no priority lanes, so you can either shove in, or be the last on. Generally I go for the latter option, although it's never much fun as these flights tend to be heavy on hand luggage.

HIDDY

Understandable I suppose as it would involve having to use more staff.

Why do they not have automatic BP checking machines then they could have a separate one for priority pax?

jgva

I don't see why you'd need more staff. Two staff, one of which takes the priority pax when there are any in the "special" line, otherwise they take the normal pax. Kinda like the smaller outstations do with the CW checkin line.

Or they could make a call at the beginning of boarding. I'm in option #3 and won't push to the front of the line in "normal" conditions. But if there's a specific call for elites before anybody else is allowed, I don't mind to walk through standing people. Plus, this will solve the "elites fighting amongst themselves" problem that others have mentioned. I bet the only reason they do that is because there's no special boarding, and thus they just assume that the others are non-elites.

AGSF

Rome is horrible. Far too few seats in the gate area, the poorly ventilated smoking lounge next to th egate, and the fact that the lounge is miles away. It is especially bad on the first flight out, as there are too many people with too much stuff returning from vacation in Italy and connecting at LHR onto LH flights. In Rome, the metal tube is (sadly) more inviting than the terminal building. I actually think the lounge is pleasant enough there, just wish it was closer to the gate.

At T5, on the other hand, there is no point in boarding first for SH flights. Plenty of space and seats in the gate area to wait it out, especially when you aren't carrying anything more than a laptop bag.

Genius1

On the late flight back from BCN tonight there was a horrendously long queue when I eventually got to the gate from the (rather nice) Iberia Miro lounge.

I skirted the queue and showed my CE BP and Silver card (not that they needed both) and the lady muttered something about 'immigration', waving at the BP checker . I smiled at her pretending not to have understood, turned to another gate agent, passed her my BP and passport, she checked them and then held back the queue for me to go ahead. Tidy.

Whilst I appreciate it is rude to swan to the front and push in front, if done discreetly then status and premium cabin pax are well within their right to skip the queue. That's what we pay for, after all.

BizBuzzBee

Not been on here much recently but glad to see this thread - it is one of my pet peeves. My approach is the suttle "At departure you can board at your convenience regardless of the class you are travelling in that day." make way forward when boarding beings approach. I have however been particularly rudely rejected at LGW on 3 occasions.

The boarding agent at LGW (I checked sunrise was off clearly!) informed me that gold card did not operate at LGW and to wait my turn then started laughing at me. Her view was she was in charge and she would make decisions about the most effective way of boarding. I told here it was a published benefit. She was having none of it so I put in a little call to the lovely special service person on duty who had just left. SS came down to the gate and provided some on the spot training! I'd never normally do that but it was the manner in which the woman took great pleasure in embarassing me and telling other passengers that I was a queue jumper that caused a little bit of a reaction!

HIDDY

I was on a LH 747 from FRA and they had one staff member checking all boarding passes.......J and Y passengers.

On a domestic NZ flight they had turnstile like machines checking boarding passes.......that's the way to go in my opinion. As I said before they can have a separate one for priority boarding.

salut0

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

David Attenborough has a wonderful section on capercaillies in both "The Living Planet" and then "The Life of Birds" series.

KD5MDK

I find that the way AA does this domestically works pretty well (when followed). Two lanes, leading to a single agent. Boarding order:
1) First, AAirpass
2) EXP/PLT, OW EMD and SPH.
3) GLD, OW Ruby, Y/B
4) By groups

1,2,3 all use the red lane, 4 uses the blue one. When a passenger in 1,2,3 comes up during general boarding, they just stand in the red lane and the GA will reach across the blue lane to scan them and let them board immediately.

I've never flown on a 3 class AA flight so I don't know if it works any differently on them.

LeisureFirst

How did you manage that?

Dirty_Idea

That's a pretty crappy benefit, don't you think? They don't stop people boarding at any point until the door shuts. So it's "GCH, SCH, Club and people in rows 14-22 may board now or at their leisure. Everyone else please wait". In other words, on a commuter Euro SH (rows 1-10 CE, say), about 4/5 of the plane get this "perk" of boarding when they please. The only people who don't are non-status people in rows 11-13. The rest may join the scrum when the flight opens or wait around till the lockers are full.

I don't LIKE boarding early, and I don't LIKE standing round the gate like a loser. I just have to make a choice. If I don't want to add 30 minutes to my journey time waiting for bags at AMS (having already taxied from Haarlem to the gate, thereby successfully burning another 20 minutes of my oh-so abundant time on this planet) I don't check-in my very modest roll-on. That means it needs to go in the lockers. The LHR staff don't police the luggage policy, so I need to be one of the first on board. The LHR staff don't offer priority boarding, therefore I must arrive at the gate early and get glares from the gate staff who seem to take offence to the fact that I'm not sat down, waiting for the plane like a good boy.

With delays and general messing around I can often find myself stood at the gate for 20 minutes (there goes another 20 of those precious minutes) before boarding. I'd MUCH prefer to be in the lounge - that's another glass of champagne I could enjoy. I'm not, though. I'm at the gate, waiting to get on the plane so my bag doesn't get displaced by someone's oversized suitcase being wedged in the locker, so I can get home this side of midnight and see my partner before she falls asleep in bed - tired from waiting through inbound aircraft delays, ATC slots, Polderbaan taxis and priority baggage coming out last. If you can grab 30 minutes back, you do it.

The extra row on the A320 is just going to make this worse. BA need to sort this out or they'll have gates swarming with GCH and SCH commuters who KNOW they won't get their bag on if they don't get on first.