OskiBear

I have flown BA a fair amount over the years and experienced two fairly poor boarding experiences the just the other day, so wondering if something has changed or if this is just the new norm.

First leg was OSL-LHR. We were hustled into a separate "Group 1-2-3" area in the gate area. I thought this was going to be civilized affair when it came to boarding. Instead, it was "Group 1 & 2" may now board. Of course, we're all trying to queue up in the small area to go through one gate and then the agent in the main gate area decides to start taking "Group 1 & 2" as well and half the crowd shifted. It was a bit of a mess and before that cleared out, they started with "Group 3," which added to the crush. Onboard, it appeared there was no space saved for the folks in Row 1, so I felt bad for everyone who had to find space for all their carry-on bags many rows back.

Second leg was LHR-LAX. It was A10 (remote gate) and everyone was lined up against the wall in what seemed to be the line for "Group 1-2-3" and we just happened to notice there was activity so we made our way to front to find them already boarding people. After this went on for some time, they announced, "Group 2 and 3" - of course, they never announced Groups 1 & 2. We were in a new line of sorts and periodically, someone would approach the front to say, "I'm in Group 1" and the agent would just tell them to get in the back of the growing line. When we got to the front, we asked the agent they never even announced Group 1 boarding and she simply shrugged.

I'm used to the fairly terrible boarding experience on AA, but this is new for my BA experiences. Were these two anomalies in one trip or is this also the new norm at BA?

danmushman

This sounds pretty standard. Lots of threads around discussing similar experiences.
FWIW my experience of AA is that they police boarding by groups much more strictly and clearly reserve First/Business overhead space.

TTmex

I think it often depends on where. At MEX they control it well and police the different queues. At LHR I've had mainly good experiences but a couple of crap ones. When the rules are properly enforced it works but just takes one lazy agent and it falls to pieces. BRU enforced the rules on my last trips but SOF was chaos

DXB2745

Funny that OSL is the airport mentioned here. I flew out of there a couple of weeks ago and the boarding was done by singular groups (1 then 2 then 3 etc)

A guy who was group 3 and tried to board first (with group 1) was politely told to “go away” as they are boarding group 1 as per the announcements and then had to take the “walk of shame” back (which always makes me smile inside) so seemed to be being enforced on my experience.

oceanscape

Lately I've noticed they have been calling groups 1 and 2 together, which is completely ridiculous as it inevitably ends up being a huge number of pax - literally no point in having group 1 anymore IMO.

oceanscape

That's extremely unusual, I've seen countless people allowed through regardless of their group - they generally don't care/check. Good to hear it was enforced for once!

Simonp27

In my experience it has been getting better. I did a day trip to GLA yesterday and on both flights Group 1 only was announced first. If they could get the screens showing the current Group like AA have I think it would be even clearer what is going on for less frequent flyers.

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, group 1 and 2 are often called together but on shorthaul doesn't seem a bad idea. Group 1 is by far the biggest group on most shorthauls, the exception would be some A319 services with small CE cabins and not so much status passengers (e.g. BLQ). Group 2 is one of the smaller groups on the whole. But put the two together you have essentially CE plus Silver and Gold. The non CE group is going to be status passengers in ET so this should divide up the boarding process reasonably efficiently since passengers should be scattered along the aisle without too much bunching. If it's the "huge number of passengers" that concerns you then that's a function of a larger CE cabin and lots of Goldies. Which group would you like to eliminate? And are you OK to pay more for this?

St Elmos Fire

My boarding life is infinitely less stressful since I aimed to board close to last on any flight. Rarely arrive at the gate before T-25. A bus gate I might allow an extra ten minutes...

PETER01

Poor Boarding Experiences - Is this new?

Unfortunately not. There's been complaints/experiences on threads before and here are a few for info.

BA Boarding Groups

Boarding experience at LHR this morning

[rant] Is BA’s LHR boarding a weird experiment now?

sigma421

I've come across some very poor gate teams recently. Several who don't seem to bother making announcements at all (unless there are tech problems?) and instead just yell things.

Simonp27

Clearly an ongoing issue. Who would be responsible for these standards at BA? Surely walking around T5 for a couple of hours would give them a clear idea of what really goes on which would be a starting point for improvement.

BA or bust

Excellent idea, but sadly you may be assuming that BA’s management team actually care enough about customers to go and walk the ‘shop floor’ from time to time.

trolleymusic

Yeah on a recent flight to PMI with a 12-row CE it seemed like it was half the plane 😅 -- which as you said makes sense -- if I were a non-status passenger in CE I would expect to board ahead of everyone in ET (even a Gold).

I think sometimes it's to do with the gate and the pre-announcements too. That flight to PMI I mentioned had a weird scrum around the 1/2/3 pillar, there weren't any pre-boarding "we'll do group 1 first, everyone else go sit down", and the gate was A12 (I think), kind of squished in behind the duty free, so when they did call group 1 eventually there were people who were kind of blocking the entrance.

And if the flight's already delayed, people are anxious and milling around.

AAtticus

BRU works well, if enforced, because there's essentially two perpendicular queues at most B gates. The priority queue coming from one walkway side and the other economy one from the seating area at each gate. Makes it a lot easier to pick out chancers. and sending them back doesn't hold up an entire queue.