British Airways announces the new First Class bus

You know the yellow ‘Priority’ tags that British Airways puts on your suitcases when you travel in First Class, Club World or Club Europe?  They don’t do anything.  Nothing.

British Airways has at least now come clean about this, with the launch of a new ‘First for First’ service.

Here are two new services which are being trialled – so don’t get too carried away – at Heathrow:

A dedicated bus for First Class passengers landing on a remote stand

9% of British Airways flights land on remote stands at Heathrow and require a bus transfer to the terminal.

A dedicated First Class bus will now be waiting for long-haul flights.  Other passengers will be blocked from leaving the aircraft until First Class passengers have been driven away.  BA estimates that this will save 10 minutes.

It will NOT be the bus below, which is the bus that Emirates uses for First Class passengers.

I have also reviewed the Qatar Airways first class bus (!).  I doubt it will look like that either ….

Priority baggage handling for First Class passengers

Yes, BA will genuinely be offering priority baggage services to First Class passengers.

Obviously this comes with caveats:

It is only a trial

It only applies for flights from New York JFK, Los Angeles, Dubai and Johannesburg into Heathrow

First Class bags will all be placed in the same container which will be loaded last.  This means that it will be the first container unloaded after landing.  An area will be cordoned off next to the luggage belt and the First Class bags lifted off by a staff member and placed there for collection.

This is clearly beyond the scope of the baggage handlers at Heathrow so it won’t be happening on your outbound flight.

We shouldn’t be too cynical, of course, as positive change is generally the result of many small incremental steps instead of one ‘big bang’ event.  BA does tend to take very small steps though …..

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