Agent69

Was on yesterday's 12:55 LHR - OSL.

3 demarcated lanes at the gate labelled group 1, group 2+3 and group 4+5. All very orderly until they called the first group announcing groups 1 and 2 can board now.

lcylocal

Still using the old Gold and Club routine at LCY this evening. Was this because it still hasn’t rolled out at LCY or just a staff member that used the old system?

T8191

*ahem* ... we’re over here >>>
Group Boarding 2018 - first hand experiences

lcylocal

Of course. Mods feel free/please move this.

hsmall

Was in full use at CPT on Friday evening (for the LGW flight): three rows for groups one to three and a separate pen for everyone else.

TheEngineer

Flew to HEL from T3 (Gate A11) on Saturday.

Two queues to get into the lounge (boarding pass scanned and passport checked). Once in the lounge called by group - flying club so in Group 1 - no gate crowding - seemed to work as it should.

Flew back from HEL on Sunday - arrived at the gate as they announced Group 1 boarding - straight on to the bus. Waited until the bus was "full" before leaving so no benefit in getting on early.

As an aside there must have been about 20 passengers at LHR on Saturday who go turned away from the gate because they were flying on the Finnair flight that departed at around the same time (10-15 mins difference I believe). One of the perils of codeshares when you fly to / from the same airports at around the same time!

FlyingScientist

Any idea why my boarding passes on the app always come in white and now also without group number?

oxtailsoup

Curious.. I’m on my third JFK flight from T5 this morning in the last few months and I’ve noticed that on each flight there are quite a high number of passengers that are ushered through boarding before the general boarding commences. This morning I counted in excess of 25 passengers. Can’t seem to see any pattern... appear to be all walks of life. Is this likely to be SS assisted passengers? It’s a mixture of Business types, families, casually dressed.

I fly quite a lot and haven’t noticed this volume on other routes so was genuinely curious!

Flip42

SSSS maybe?

Vinotraveller

The system generally seems to be working well at Glasgow these days, with checking of BP's common and plenty of rejections noted. At DUS on Wednesday it was being heavily enforced. There had been a big surge of people in front of us when Group 1 was called, and all of them were turned away giving us a clear path through.

Generally speaking boarding seems quicker as a result, and I have had far less late departures due to very slow boarding.

Tobias-UK

Which device are you using, what is your status?

FlyingScientist

iPad, Gold

alexjohnson

Was wondering about the FT reaction to this, and not seeing a lot of JFK thoughts with that as the search term. JFK T7 is a mess with construction which doesn't help (though after a year thank God they've fixed the world's shortest escalator), but my experience of it as a GCH is it is a mess, and has been since introduction. The main problem is that if you have pre-flight dining you will be the last to the gate, by which time they've probably announced general boarding. The concept envisages that everyone is more-or-less at the gate at the same time - and for shorthaul that's almost definitely right - but for most transatlantic F/J pax, that simply isn't true. It follows that the zone 1 queue will then be the longest, but I have noticed that the gate agents at JFK don't then dedicate themselves to getting zone 1 cleared, but continue to deal with the other queues on an equal basis. I am not going to queue-jump but it's often the case that you can see it would be quicker just to join the zone 3 queue, which makes no sense. In addition, removing the signage seems to encourage at least some pax to give it a try as even to give this the benefit of the doubt, there are few visual cues and what does "general boarding" even mean when they've stopped calling by zone? Even if they are told otherwise by the gate agent, they've still joined the queue, and it's still taken the gate agent as long to say no to them as it would have to let them through, and probably longer. Having done that, you will then be queueing again on the skybridge - which in fairness is not new and what happens if you are late to board, but now you go from one queue immediately into another. And, I don't know what they (/TSA) did to priority security at T7 in the last, what, year to 18 months?, but the queue there is now always long and always slow. My sense is that I will now, reliably, have three long queues at JFK, and one of those queues has been manufactured by this zoned boarding policy. Having grumbled, their Twitter team asked me what I suggested, and I think clear priority signage irrespective of the zones should be restored.

Interestingly it seems fine the other way, at LHR coming back, but from memory they still have the priority signage there.

FlyingScientist

This still happens to be the case...

wcel

I occasionally have the same issue and have found that my frequent flyer number is not always correctly attached to the booking (even though I can log in to BA website and my booking is attached to my profile).

Once you attach the number correctly, then the boarding pass and group will be corrected