FlyingB1975

Fast track boarding for Club and Gold now seems to be offered fairly consistently at LCY. But I really wonder who came up with the design of the roped off area. Some gates have it at the other end from where boarding passes are checked. Makes one fight through a full gate area.
Is the BA website making it clear that fast track is not a silver benefit at LCY?

chris1979

I agree it's not perfect (and there's an element of (at most gates I seem to fly from) others being able to sneak in (though I haven't witnessed this)) but I quite like it.

I tend to go for 2D on the 190 and 1A on the 170 and storage space is very limited upfront due to the crew / a/c equip stuff that's stored towards the front in the overhead bins (quite annoying) so being amogst the first few on the plane is important hence I like this new benefit.

FlyingB1975

There are a few gates where the area just next to the boarding pass check is roped off, that does seem to make a little more sense.

Irrespective of that it feels weird to sit there. Very exposed. The only thing missing is a sign saying "don't feed the goldies".

Globaliser

I always thought that fast track boarding at LCY consisted of being called by name to go to the gate, turning up there to find no queue or other waiting passengers, getting scanned (or manually crossed off the list), and walking straight out to the aircraft with the aircraft door being shut immediately behind you.

flabound

no fast track on BA001
disgraceful

its all about who can run/powerwalk fastest

:-)

chris1979

LOL ^

mario

I've only experienced the 'holding pen' for Golds and CE at LCY once.

TBH I found the whole thing very gimmicky and unnecessary. Apart from making yourself feel quite "exposed" or "important" (depending on the personality type ), it doesn't really make much of a difference.

It would be much better if they had separate security lanes for CE/Gold instead of priority boarding.

KenJohn

For what it is worth, it was the same on the original BA001 (Concorde as well). Only the lounge facilities were so good and the on-board cabin was so cramped; no one rushed to board. Coats and hats were collected at the gate before boarding (no room on board).

No priority luggage either!

Cannot figure out why cabin luggage was never an issue back in those days since Concorde did not have a lot of overhead storage.

I recall see Donatello Versace and her 10 assistants strolling past customs leaving one poor junior assistant to collect everyone's bags from the carousel

gms

Concorde offered a suiter service with a guarantee that these items would be delivered within 8 minutes of arrival. The rest of the hold luggage was supposed to arrive within 15 minutes. So there wasn't the same pressure to take cabin bags. The overhead bins could pretty much just take a smallish briefcase, just leaving the space under the seat in front of you.

If I remember rightly, for me it worked out perfectly to coincide with getting through Immigration (if you were in the front cabin at least!).

Another key benefit of Concorde was that you were pretty much guaranteed not to arrive just after some Iberia flight had deposited several hundred non-English speaking people into the queue in front of you! Grrrr!

fripperies

Foreigners eh? Tsk. Why can't they do the decent thing and learn to speak English?

KenJohn

I do remember JFK T7 was very quiet when we landed on BA1. Clearing immigration was a breeze (I was sitting in the middle of Donatella's retinue" in the front cabin so we did wait a little bit for our bags.

gms

But, back in the days of printed immigration forms, they could at least have made some effort to fill the form in before they got to the front of the queue.
My point was simply that Concorde generally let you beat the queues.

My post wasn't intended to be a xenophobic comment and I apologise if anyone interpreted it as such or took offence. Or maybe I should just relax and remember that on Flyertalk a small minority of people take joy in quoting out of context and trying to twist comments to make fellow contributors look bad.

Genius1

Priority boarding is a stated benefit for First, Club World, Club Europe, oneworld Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby.

Any outstations not offering priority boarding for the above passengers are contravening BA's own rules.

fripperies

Then I apologise. I did read it as casual xenophobia and, hands up, I did highlight it to make you look bad, though tbh I don't think I twisted your comment, simply took it at face value.

If I can go OT for a moment, there's an unacceptable degree of xenophobia in the UK's public discourse today. No need to name the politicians and papers responsible for it, we all know which they are, and they are destroying lives. What's that got to with FT? Well my point is that even those of us who aren't racist or ideologically xenophobic can contribute to it unintentionally by making casual jokes against foreigners. I'm not advocating censorship in any shape or form, just pointing out that a joke is never 'just' a joke, it's an idea that resonates in a particular context.

I'm sensitive to this issue for certain reasons. I know you didn't mean to be offensive and apologise again for over-reacting.

LondonElite

sigh...

In so many more ways as well.

Hope this is not taken out of context.