New British Airways hand baggage policy and boarding plan announced

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Joe says:

  29 Jul29 July 06:46

  They trialled in new boarding at dus last week. Golds and club first, then I think it was going to be silver and bronze but the lady saw there was a lot of silver and did silver only. One interesting thing was that the 10 or so golds boarded as specified and the first silver to board got an op-up

• jhk says:

  29 Jul29 July 06:53

  i do not know what is going on with ba. but each month we hear less things. than points than dirty plains than not working seat etc.etc. may be better a compleet new management who will get to look what does the ba traveller likes to have. service and more service.

• Polly says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:02

  More to the point Rob, where did they put those extra bags, if not in the hold? Did they go on the next flight or where did they end up?

  • Rob says:

    29 Jul29 July 07:58

    Next flight, which was the next day

    • Mark says:

      29 Jul29 July 08:52

      Had that been me at the front rob I would have stood up and told the whole cabin!!! Could you imagine he uproar.

      “Hey everyone, if you think you bags going in the hold then this guy says not. They’ll be on the next flight tomorrow”!!!

      • richard says:

        29 Jul29 July 11:18

        imagine if you left your passport in there!!

        • JamesWag says:

          30 Jul30 July 10:23

          Or important medicines you absolutely needed.

• Philip Hart says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:10

  The Yellow Tag mechanism is typical backasswards thinking.

  To be able to get both your bags in the overhead lockers, all you need do is remove the Yellow Tag before reaching the aircraft door – or indeed even once inside the aircraft. Bingo – 2 pieces of locker baggage!

  The way to make this actually work is to adopt the exact opposite approach; allow only those bags HAVING a Yellow Tag to go in the overhead locker. Otherwise they have to go on the floor, or be transferred to the hold (or – scarily – not, according to Rob’s recent experience).

  Thus, acquiring a Yellow Tag would be vital to getting dibs on valuable locker real estate, and PAX would actively ensure they got their hands on one.

  But maybe the BA beancounters ran the numbers, and figured out that the current mechanism requires fewer Yellow Tags and is thus cheaper to operate. Or maybe they didn’t think it through at all 🙂

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    29 Jul29 July 07:22

    You could still but a yellow tag on yourself, however, so ether way BA can’t win assuming there are many devious thinking people around to circumvent whatever system they use !

    • Jason says:

      29 Jul29 July 07:56

      Looks like we have 2 here 🙂

  • Paul says:

    29 Jul29 July 08:36

    Removing a yellow tag wont work. Bags without tags can be put in the hold. And as each passenger can only have one yellow tag adding one to a second bag will be a bit of a giveaway.

  • Red says:

    29 Jul29 July 10:03

    I see people do this all the time on Ryanair flights, as soon as the tag has been put on the bag to say it’s going in the hold they remove it once out of sight of the staff. This is normally followed by chaos in the cabin as people can’t get their bags in the overhead!

    My other half once saw a family of 8 all remove their tags in front of her. So when she got to the gate she grassed them up 🙂 Next thing two members of staff went running down the stairs after them followed by a large argument.

    • Paul says:

      29 Jul29 July 10:12

      The BA system is different from Ryan air – the yellow tag means you can take it onto the plane, no tag means it might end up in the hold.

      • TimS says:

        29 Jul29 July 11:24

        True, but the yellow tags are the same for all flights as far as I have seen, so frequent flyers could start saving yellow tags from past flights to re-use for second bags if necessary…

  • Lady London says:

    29 Jul29 July 12:29

    I guess that’s because if the plane is a certain amount late they have to pay passengers* legislated EU261 compensation. But for late baggage they don’t have to compensate.

    If I’d heard that I’d view it as fraudulent. Just shows what airlines will do until there’s legislation to stop them.

• Tim says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:15

  The new boarding process will be great if it’s policed. The current scrum is unacceptable so hopefully, this will ease things. However, this will probably only be policed at LHR and LGW – how will this work on the return when the gate staff don’t work for BA and can’t be bothered?

• Phil says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:18

  The last time I flew Club World there were only 2 overhead lockers left for passengers, all the others were full of BA stuff. And prior to that when I was flying World Traveller Plus, a member of the cabin crew was storing his belongings in the locker above me. And what was worse, he kept on opening it to get stuff out.

  • JamesWag says:

    30 Jul30 July 10:39

    I hope you wrote to BA and complained or at least to inform them.
    If we flyers don’t tell BA managers then the flight crew will continue to misbehave whilst the head office knows nothing about it.

• ee says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:21

  What if you only have one carry on which is smaller than the second piece? Does that get tagged? Seems unfair if so… Don’t really want my stuff on their grubby floor!

  • Jono says:

    29 Jul29 July 08:04

    This is the issue that I have. I only take one piece of baggage. It will fit under the seat, but I want to put it in the overheads and enjoy the (limited) legroom.

  • Tim says:

    29 Jul29 July 08:04

    If you only have one carry on, regardless of size, you get to pop it in the overhead cabinets.

• William says:

  29 Jul29 July 07:23

  Ah….the joy of flying! It is so stress free.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.