I have been moved in Hong Kong from the Business queue to the First queue as an Emerald member traveling in Business.

But that's only because there is a F queue. :)

Recently took a flight out of PVG.

There was only a J and Y queue, so I joined the J queue like a normal person; at this point I'm pretty much in the front, so it's all good for me. After the line started to get long, but the boarding process did not start yet (it was slightly delayed), this late arriving DYKWIA guy comes up and decides he's going to start creating his own line. I'm looking at him like are you on standby and the GA comes over and before she can say anything, he pulls the, "I'm a DM" card and she basically just backs off. Now you can imagine all the J passengers are trying to move to the new line, because they think that's the new J line. More confusion when they're told DMs have priority for them (paying premium passengers), thus forcing the GA to put out new signs that read "First Class and Diamond."

Anyways all this time, I'm still standing in the original J queue like ... assert your rights as GAs! But sadly there are are now some 35 DMs (!!) in the new queue.

In the end, the DYKWIA DM won. :(

My HKG-ORD last week had (rigidly enforced ^ ) 4 lane boarding.

F, Diam, OWE
J, Gold, OWS
PE
Eco

Technically F pax and DM can be pull by GA to go to the front of the line. But so far they are only pulling F pax, and not DMs. Mind you this is unpublished benefit and most CX staff ignores it. But I guess if some DM wants to pull DYKWIA, yeah, CX staff is known to back off to characters....

I haven't encountered that yet since they have the 3/4-line scheme. In my case if there is a F cabin, there is always a line for F/DM/OWE. Did you encounter this in EWR?

Only one time in EWR, and only 3 times in HKG, but not much lately. I asked an agent is this something new, and she said its something given in communiques but not a strict policy. F/DM, if identified, can get pulled out of the line and escorted to the front during boarding.

When I was still flying out of JFK I've seem this a few times in HKG-JFK flights, F would get identified and pulled to the side up front, but I haven't fly JFK-HKG-JFK anymore so don't know if they still do that now.

The thing is, your flight has four classes of service.

My flight out of PVG only had two!

The DYWIA DM took it upon himself to create a new queue after seeing how long the standard priority line was.

Joins ICAC Man and 40,000 chef as examples of aggression wins.

I'm guessing SL and OWR in PEY line?

I'll (and had) complaint this to MPC (and of course, in return you'll get a template apology). PVG (and PEK as well actually) staff quality varies a lot. Once I saw GA did hand carry size / quantity check for a 320 before boarding at PVG. But more of the time is the two lines simply board together and there's no priority concept at all

Try to board in WNZ, everyone jumps over to the J line and the GAs doesn't care.

Reading about all these DMs and the DYKWIA behavior, I'm actually seeing a lot of parallel between this and the KE VP's nut issue...

Obviously the scale of the incident is different but the concept of 'I'm important so I can do whatever the hell I like' is similar. Pretty appalling to say the least...

Thinking about this whole issue makes me angry and I kinda wish that they just did away with this whole elite gets priority boarding (so you just board based on your class/row number) but then I'd also feel sorry for the other Y DMs that try to do the right thing.

What happened to noblesse oblige?

Twisted into jus primae noctis?

Unless you're in the Mainland, where it's a egalitarian free-for-all...

this was my observation at SHA - and I'm not even sure there was an F cabin on the day.

The 'priority' queue was miles long, and the GAs pulled out a handwritten sigh with 'Diamond' on it, and a couple of people went up to use that.

Based on that i would have thought at least some DMs might think there is an entitlement.