Got a call back and did this. Felt a bit .....y but she didn’t cover herself in glory so it is what it is. Hopefully it results in something.

P.S., one interesting realisation I had recently after a few rare ET flights is that Group 0 only really matters if you pay the extra for CE given that is when the entire cabin is already Group 1 and so there is risk of all the overheads around your seat being full if you board at the end of Group 1. It’s exactly the reverse of what you would expect when paying the extra to upgrade in some ways.

Group 0 called in LHR T3 and they actually stopped a Group 1 at this point who was also flying F. He didn�t look too pleased.

Slightly OT but we embarked on our very first cruise last Friday. BA could learn a thing or two from Cunard. People attempting to queue jump to earlier boarding than their class of travel or status supported were very politely but firmly told to sit back down. It�s admittedly a very different thing boarding 2600 passengers on a ship over the course of 3 or 4 hours to boarding 150 people in under half an hour for a short haul flight but if you don�t have the will or the training to stick to your advertised processes then it�s just not going to happen. The staff, as far as I could see, were contracted from the port of Southampton not Cunard employees so the third party excuse doesn�t hold.
Just send people back if they attempt to board too soon as emeraldflyer witnessed. Or have the turnstile just not allow progress if your group isn�t called. But BA have to care and I think they mostly don�t.

Qantas have at least some of their gates set to know what the current group is. If you try to scan a boarding card for a group that hasn't yet been called, gate goes red and error is "group not yet open". You are then sent away. Seemed to work very effectively!

Given that BA can't reliably get their website or app to work, and can't get a lot of their staff to follow boarding rules, probably a bit much to hope that they'd do something that advanced with boarding gates though...

Beautifully done yesterday evening at JFK. Long G1 line, myself and a couple of others in G0 (including a Prem) proactively sought out and invited to pre-board early. A chap who appeared to be G1 (at least inferred by all of the gold bag tags he had on his rucksack and roller bag) remarked to the agent that it was "bang out of order that mates of the crew get on board before BA's prestige customers". Cue a rolling of the eyes and a bit of a giggle between us who pre-boarded. Interestingly, all of us were sitting a few rows of each other in WT.

Great crew, all youngsters but really enjoying their roles, nice bit of banter. Drinks flowing nicely - bit hungover today though!

I now fly ET rather than CE due to the changes and I had the same realisation on my last flight. Group 0 is a far more pleasant an experience if you have selected seats further down the back!!!

aks120

Yes, Intercruises at Southampton is contracted by Cunard, or rather Carnival UK, they are specialist handlers about this and stick to a clear boarding sequence. However their sequence is
- Queens Grill = 1 or 2% of passengers
- Princess Grill = 2 or 3% of passengers
- Diamond status = 10% of passengers (can be higher though) = Gold equivalent for Cunard
then Club, Platinum status, then the rest
So on Cunard, money talks over status, if you did spend a lot on a QG suite, you board before a Diamond who may have a minimum of 150 days, or 15 previous cruises, to their name. They don't have a situation where Group 1 is status plus business class plus family members, and potentially half those boarding.

I hope you enjoyed your time on the QM2.

Is there anything he doesn�t know..?!

I doubt it. He even knew which of the 4 Cunard queens was departing that day! I mean it�s always possible to look it up but it almost seems as if CWS just has an encyclopaedic knowledge in all areas.

corporate-wage-slave Yes thanks. Our very first cruise and the QM2 was pretty special. It was to celebrate Lord Flies recovering from his recent health scare and me hitting retirement age (ouch). We were in Princess Grill so CW equivalent rather than F and it was actually people in Queens Grill (i.e. higher up the pecking order) who tried to jump even further ahead. I was very impressed by the handling of that by the clearly very experienced staff.

I didn't need to look it up (though Queen Elizabeth is based in Seattle and Queen Victoria in the Med, so it was that or Queen Anne). But by quite a shocking coincidence I rolled off QM2 the same Friday that you embarked, unaware until today that you were somewhere else in the Mayflower Terminal - if I had met you there, that would have really scared you! It's a very small world. I am pleased that LordF has got over the health scare and I'm sure a trip on QM2 added to the recuperation. You need to do a Crossing next!

Good Lord. If I’d known our very own CWS was there I would certainly have taken steps to meet up!

We so much enjoyed the shore days and who could not be impressed by the fjords? I’ve heard that a crossing has a very different atmosphere and it’s on our to do list once the coffers have recovered from last week.

I suspect we now should return to discussing air travel on BA before the mods intervene!

No group 0 for me today on either app and printed boarding passed on my FCO LHR SFO
Nice gesture of the lounge supervisor who wrote a 0 by pen on the BPs after jokingly stating (we�re almost family) �you dont fly anymore you lost your status�. She also called the gate to have me pre board. Top notch

Update
The SM at the gate got a little mad at the pen mark on the BP (thinking i did it myself?)and argued �if you didnt get it printed it means you dont have it� but then he very warmly let me in with another GGL who had it correctly printed
Must be a personal bug

That’s why CE should be group 2, just like CE is on 3 class long haul.