T8191

orbitmic ... I wonder why Check-in lines and Group Boarding seem to work so well (IME) in the USA? Surely they have the same queueing habits as Europeans?

krispy84

NickB

But where is that self-awareness/openness going to come from? People behave they way they do for a reason (or rather as a result of a complex map of conscious and unconscious reasons and processes). If you want them to behave differently, you need to change something in their environment or their cognitive mapping of the environment which is going to make them change. And, in our context, that can only come from the way you design the boarding process, both in its hard elements (infrastructure, etc...) and its soft elements (the announcements that you make, etc...)
Just wishing people to be different to what they are is rarely a particularly successful strategy, IME.

deeruck

Nope. "Gate lice" is the term used on the AA board, and it describes the general swarm of people towards the gate. By the sounds of it, it is easier to swim upstream through a scrum of people than a queue.

NickB

IME, notwithstanding the moans on US airline fora, it still seems to me that the boarding process works somewhat better in US airports than European ones. Two things, it seems to me, make it different: usually, there is more gate space than in Europe. Secondly, the boarding process also tends to start earlier, which gives GAs a little more headroom to enforce boarding procedures.

Forgot to mention a third one, partly linked to what orbitmic said regarding outstations: US airlines tend to rely less on handling agents than European airlines and, therefore, GAs are usually more familiar with the boarding protocols of their own airline.

rickg523

It is, because people in a scrum don't carry the sense of entitlement to place as those positioned in a queue - even the wrong queue.

corporate-wage-slave

I will add two more factors: gate agents in the USA have a less customer friendly, more brutal approach to their task. Whether that is good or bad is open to discussion, but if a gate agent wants people to clear out of the way this will happen. Also whereas BA services regularly have a quarter or even a third of their passengers with Silver status or above, and another large chunk in Club Europe, you are unlikely to get that sort of proportion in the USA, when many upgrades get cleared at the end of the process.

Crampedin13A

I find the way BA vaguely places the priority lane signs at outstations where they don't use tensa barriers and sometimes inadequate seating at the gate causes a lot of this confusion. Especially for people who aren't flying every week. Air Canada has it's own issues but generally the way they place the boarding group signs is clear as to where people are to line up

Andriyko

Most people who fly within the USA will speak at least some English. I noticed that the problem many gate agents have in European airports is that many passengers simply do not understand them. Many people will not understand what these signs and numbers mean and why they can't board first if they've been waiting for so long at the gate. Most people don't fly every week and don't understand the class/status system. Many airports are simply not laid out in a way to support the complicated boarding system.

NickB

IME, announcements at outstations are usually made in English and in the local language.While there will, admittedly, be some passengers who speak neither, this IME generally represents only a small minority of the passengers flying BA at most European out-stations.

schrodingerdog

People queue because the don't want their (sometimes oversized, sometimes within limits) hand baggage sent to the hold.

Is that simple.

Make an announcement before boarding that all hand luggage will be taken on board and will fit in the lockers and no-one will queue.

This was very clear years ago when people will only queue for Ryanair / Easyjet flights as for full-service companies it was almost guaranteed that your luggage will make it in. Now that there is no difference people just queue regardless of airline.

etiene

It was at least speculated that the group numbers were meant to address this [since they are either identical or almost so to the previous system] - doesn't seem to have helped much.

1P

While the boarding process may be flawed, and gate lice abound, check-in is a different matter, For most flights, you can check in at any time that day, but you can only check bags up to 4 hours ahead. That's the difference. BA's two hours is just ridiculous,and the lines for bag drop are shameful. Follow the American model and you'd see an immediate difference.

And in the US you don't select a check-in point based on your destination, you simply line up and then take the first available agent, who can handle all flights. Simple!

DeathSlam

The trouble is that the people who commission systems have ideas about solutions and constraints. They have their own vanity in other words.
The people who design and implement systems have no need to make the right thing they only need to satisfy the person with the checkbook.
The wages of the person commissioning the work are seldom impacted by the long term ROI of the customer satisfaction or efficiency of the systems they commission.
Designing a system that takes into account the mistakes people will naturally make is called Human Factors Engineering.
Designing a system that works with peoples nature to provide a satisfying result is called User Experience Design.
While many systems have one or the other or both of these as specified requirements it is often the case that only lip service is paid to it.
When it comes to arranging some tensa barriers in a preconfigured gate space I suspect little thought is put into either.

wanderingjock

Preveza - LHR: absolute Zoo!!!!

rows 34-36 at the front, then some silvers, then some parents with <1 y olds, then the general public, then some more parents with <2 y olds,then some golds, then more general boarding, then some parents with pushchairs who weren't listening, then me!

jeez!

sort it out BA!!!