Door5L

Just completed another Heathrow to Edinburgh round trip this weekend as I regularly do. Every time ground staff have offered priority boarding for economy passengers who are willing to check in their bag and as soon as the announcement is made chaos tends to ensue. Out to Edi on Friday, about 12 passengers took up the offer and went through before group 1.

Out to Edi on Friday morning was a mess and even on board the crew announced that the luggage bins at the rear were full so passengers should use up any space they could as they got on - inevitably most people just dumped their bags on top of all the Club ones. The same happened on the return today.
It is one thing to base your domestic and EU service on the low cost carrier model but when will BA learn that they need to have stricter hand luggage rules similar to EasyJet and Ryanair. BA’s boarding because of luggage has in 6/7 of my recent flights been a total mess especially as anything goes in terms of what you take on board!

subject2load

A sadly familiar brand of chaos, and which has long been a source of combined irritation and bemusement to me when flying BA short-haul.

The disorganisation you describe (surrounding both boarding procedures and baggage enforcement) very often gives the impression of an airline that began life just a month or so ago, rather than one operating for several decades. You’re far less likely to encounter such inefficiency with the likes of Easy, Ryanair, Jet2 etc. Maybe one of the key benefits of using non-‘premium’ carriers ….. ? 🤔

OverTheHorizon

The LCCs have conclusively proved that proper control of boarding and hand luggage are not only possible, but highly desirable !! They too are under severe on-time departure pressure and they certainly don't have more gate staff than BA, nor any less to do... The only reason I can that BA don't manage this properly is that they can't be bothered. The tools are all there, sadly the will is clearly lacking.

Tobias-UK

Are you proposing BA introduce charges to allow you to take hand luggage on board?

MFCC

I’m of the view that basic Y fares on short haul should include a hold bag and not a hand bag. You’d be allowed a small personal item. A suitcase in the cabin would be chargeable. I’m also of the understanding that most passengers would hate this. It would reduce the chaos during boarding though, especially on a 321NEO to Milan in the middle of winter.

ratechaser

Reduce the chaos yes, but it would also increase the cost to BA in terms of baggage handling charges, as well as increase the load/need for airport check in desks.

I actually quite like the idea in principle, but doubt it will happen...

drwook

I'm one of the rare people on FT (it appears) who does habitually check a bag, even for relatively short trips. I've had the odd long wait for luggage but it beats dragging cases around the airport and fighting for bin space personally.

sammyg901

This is how some airlines work in the US I think & I saw one is trialling initiatives to ensure that if you are just dropping a bag and you've got a boarding pass then you'd have a fast tracked queue. BA would need to sort out their luggage handling / wait times at Heathrow though!

yes I hate paying but I agree and it is something Ryanair and Easyjet have got spot on these days, I've done multiple flights with them, some full recently and never a problem with hand luggage. Though BA don't help themselves with enforcement- patchy at best at the gate which just shifts the problem to the crew. Some of the luggage I see people carrying on is ridiculous!

Jack Union

Would it not be easier to restrict the size of hand luggage to bags that fit under the seat only on the lowest SH economy fares. From an IT point of view it should be easy to implement: No front row seating, no emergency row seating, under seat back packs only. When at the airport, they can put the tags they have on the bags of passengers with these restrictions, so crew can easily see any luggage in the overhead bins that should be under seats.

i_concur

Last short haul I did the overhead bins were full of such tagged luggage. What’s the point if not enforced on the plane?

Misco60

What would prevent passengers immediately removing those tags? Like the yellow ones they used to put on all small bags that (they said) had to go under the seat in front?

All BA has to do is enforce their own existing rules on carry-on bags and there would usually be room for everyone's hand luggage.

r22r44bell47

Me too. In 40 years, 2 million+ miles and over 600 sectors I’ve had checked baggage delays 3 or 4 times (including the first week of operation in T5), only one of which was outbound and caused problems. For me it’s just not worth the hassle.

dougzz

Oddly I read that as enforce the rules already in place and not incentivise HBO passengers to queue jump by benefitting from BAs willingness to work around their own rules, but then I probably twisted it to match my own thoughts. There’s little point in boarding by group when you allow such obvious manipulation around that.

The reason the LCC make this work is overtime they’ve established they enforce the rules and don’t make endless exceptions and workarounds. The entire boarding and HBO processes will never work for BA until they choose to make it work, and initially that’ll upset a lot of people that have become accustomed to working the system. Like several other things this revolves around BAs desire to be both a legacy carrier with a premium product, and compete with LCC on price for a stripped down service. Poor implementation means they’re neither one nor the other, just a hybrid muddle of the two.

BOH

The LCC's really have got this off to a tee, they now also seem to be limiting the number of Priority fares on each flight that include a larger carry-on. I think Easyjet have a max number of large cabin bags of 90 per A320 flight and above this, all further bags are gate checked. So basically if you have bought a fare that includes a larger cabin bag then it is up to you to ensure you are at the gate to be one of the first 90 to board. If you aren't, tough luck and your rollaboard wull be gate checked.

Contrast this to the BA shambles whereby I reckon pre- Covid, at least 30% of flights I took were delayed on departure because too many cabin bags have been allowed on. The LCC policy is to be proactive and ensure only the number of bags get on board that there is physically room for. BA's policy seems to be to let everything anyone wants on board and then reactively offload it afterwards once boarding is complete. So many times I have seen BA CC wheeling bags up the aisle after everyone has boarded to offload them for check-in to the hold. Why is BA so useless at this?

Greenpen

The problem is not limited to HBO passengers. Many others bring multiple large hand luggage onto the flight.