thejohn

boarding the BA 2775 JER-LGW yesterday from gate 11 no priority for extra assistance or parents with small children, actually there was no announcements at the gate whatsoever just the door opened and the surge began to the Aircraft (it was a full flight due to 2 flights being consolidated) I do know this Airport is status heavy but surely some control should be exercised particularly for extra assistance passengers and those with small children.
John

ThatT1Feeling

Yes, I had this at CPH a couple of weeks ago. I guess for a lot of Bronze (and maybe a few Silver card holders), they could still be on their first flight since the new boarding by group was created so it might come as a surprise.

stewaran

Also since bronze was introduced they are used to boarding first, as most silver/gold would have been waiting in the lounge

IMH

Months from now there will still be passengers in every group who are experiencing the new process for the first time. Even some Gold card holders regularly go many months without flying BA.

Sealink

I can't bear though, peoples complete obliviousness to procedures. How can people miss the signage, the announcements, the big group number on their boarding pass?

Globaliser

"I fly all the time, don't you know? And I know it all already. Announcements are for peons."

IMH

The experiences reported above suggest that in many cases signs have yet to be deployed and announcements are inadequate or missing. Of course you're right to observe that some people won't or can't follow procedures, but at the moment those procedures aren't consistently in place.

thebigben

It's easy for people to turn a blind eye on their boarding pass if it might get them in faster

orbitmic

In my experience LHR has some of the worst implemented group boarding in the BA network for some reason despite having the required lanes design. People just queue in arrival order wherever they are (with no interest for group numbers) especially at the B and C satellites. In that sense, the rightly notorious British fascination for queuing works as to worsen the boarding experience as it seems that in people's minds, queuing trumps grouping. I do not understand why no one is trying to police it, not even with announcements etc. On an A380, it makes for truly chaotic boarding experience.

TheOldMan

I flew 7 S/H flights last week and the only one to enforce the new system was Amsterdam to LCY. Admittedly, some were bus transfer which makes it difficult if not impossible to control.

Fitch

Because no BA manager's bonus is at stake... I really do think it's that simple.

Group Boarding is becoming a Blairite-style policy: announced to great fanfare so that it looks like they're doing something then being allowed to wither and die

DYKWIA

But initially, it seemed the group boarding helped speed up the boarding process So I don't get your point.

fluffymitten

The group number is actually quite small on the app BP. When I first experienced the process late February I had no idea where to find my group.

Also, signage at hip level is no good when 50/60 people are standing in front of it.

The LHR-GLA-LHR route I did had very poor communication. The boarding "process" wasn't clearly announced. Groups were called within minutes of each other so the prior group did not clear before the next one was called and there was no enforcement of group ordered boarding.

No wonder passengers, new or old, have no clue what's going on. It's badly implemented, poorly enforced, and seems to be making boarding a longer, more tedious process than ever before.

ringingup

So fare I've only experienced the new boarding process once at Heathrow and my thinking was along the lines of yours.

Is it so difficult to say before boarding (and repeat it during the boarding process) something like: "Ladies and gentlemen, some of you may not be familiar with our new boarding process. Your boarding pass contains a group number. Please take note. There are a number of lanes corresponding to your group. Please make sure you're in the right queue. Should you have any questions, blah blah".

Fitch

Point being that when a big new policy/process is promulgated in any organisation, there is a tendency in the early days for most staff to visibly comply because they don't know the consequences of not doing so.

However, people being people, over time many slip back into the old ways of doing things. All of this is to be expected and it's why we set performance targets for managers so that they will go out of their offices and chivvy staff along !

Without that push over a sustained period (which admittedly is a long, hard slog), you never get to the point where the "new way of doing things" becomes just "the way it's done".

From the anecdotal reports in this thread and elsewhere (statistically insignificant but nonetheless suggestive) it would appear that the above is a plausible explanation for the observed behaviours...