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BAEC Bronze members now allowed Priority Boarding

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When I was at Heathrow last Sunday, heading back to Germany to start my US trip (yes, I know …..), something caught my eye. As I joined the Priority Boarding line, my eye glanced at the blue board and I saw that ‘Executive Club Bronze’ was listed as an eligible card.

It had been a long day, so I filed it away under ‘I’m not sure I knew that’ and promptly forgot about it. Then, yesterday, British Airways made an official announcement about it. (Darn it, there went my world exclusive ….. need to pay more attention!)

Business Traveller has full details here including this quote from BA:

“Given how much our premium customers value priority boarding, we’re delighted to offer this same privilege to our Bronze Executive Club members.

“We believe it will give our Bronze cardholders greater recognition and encourage Executive Club loyalty, as well as give them a head start on every flight they make.”

Now, my initial reaction is that this is just getting silly. Remember that Bronze only requires 300 tier points, so you can pretty much get it with one return Club World flight. (My 2-year old is on 280 tier points after our Dubai flights at Easter.)

I’m sure BA has done the maths, but they must now be in a position where over 50% of the passengers on some flights will have priority boarding! Add in the fact that you can also check in at Club desks as a Bronze and you can see it getting like Fast Track security – a place where it is quicker to join the ‘nobody’ line!

In practice, of course, I assume BA has run the numbers and it does make sense. Let’s see ….

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (24)

  • invicta says:
    25 Jul25 July 12:04

    I just think this is to harmonize their priority boarding process with other OneWorld carriers. American Airlines has always allowed Ruby to have priority boarding, ableit in a staged process. AA have the boarding group boldly printed on the boarding card to stop too much abuse though. http://www.aa.com/i18n/urls/boarding.jsp

    • Sir Stamford says:
      25 Jul25 July 12:31

      Maybe for AA, CX, MH but I don’t think it common benefit for Oneworld Ruby to get priority boarding.
      http://www.oneworld.com/ffp/oneworld-benefits

      Have a look at Qantas, Air Berlin, JAL etc – none of their equivalent Ruby levels provide priority boarding as far as I am aware. Even Iberia Plus doesn’t offer this at the moment.

      Sir Stamford

  • Zoe says:
    25 Jul25 July 13:07

    We only did our first business class flight last October, luckily at bag drop we obviously looked clueless as the check in lady explained that we should wait in the lounge until about 30 mins before then get on last. It seemed to work very well for us.

    On a slightly different note I’ve just used our first 241’s for a booking to Miami. Could only pick up 2 seat in First and 2 in Business, I would like us to all be in the same cabin, should I be checking BA.com daily for more seats coming up. Any particular time of day? It’s not desperate as my girls are late teens so could sit in business together and behave themselves. Also if I wind up with the choice how much better is First?

    • Rob says:
      25 Jul25 July 13:20

      Depends if you get Old First or New First. If its Old First then the TV is probably bigger in Club World! For me, the real value of F is if travelling alone as you can get a solo seat – something not possible in CW.

      Food etc is better than CW although still not on a par with Lufthansa, Swiss etc. You’d be able to get all 4 of you into the Concorde Room at Heathrow although, again, that it is not an experience on a par with, say, the Lufthansa First Class Terminal.

      Keep an eye, seats may open up. Even if they only open up 48 hours before you can still switch.

      Miami is also a rumoured A380 route, so if you’re not flying until, say, next March or later you may even get one of those.

  • R. Saunders says:
    25 Jul25 July 20:49

    What is the point? Passengers sitting in club putting their bags away and the getting them out again whilst the bulk of passengers (you know, the ones down the back) have to wait whilst they faff around, which holds up boarding
    Boarding should be FIRST (class), Families with small children, and those that require more time, then seat rows, which would prevent the scrum.
    I don’t like the way some card holders sitting in economy abandon their often over-sized roll-ons in CE (Club Europe) overhead bins either, as this often also causes space problems.

  • v8gaz says:
    27 Jul27 July 19:46

    Priority boarding is just not of interest to me. As long as I have an allocated seat, i’m going to end up there whether I board first or last. As a nervous flyer, that’s good bar time wasted. Luggage? If you have so much luggage that it wont fit under your seat, then do us all a favour and check it, you selfish pigs.

    • Alan says:
      27 Jul27 July 20:25

      I think that’s a bit OTT. It’s perfectly possible to have a small piece of luggage well within hand baggage regs that won’t fit under the seat – or will fit under but then reduces your legroom.

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