British Airways will trial a new ‘Group 0’ boarding process from Tuesday

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• PMcC says:

  10 Sep10 September 19:34

  This is ridiculous and confirms my suspicious that BA is rudderless and will not make it back to any sort of acceptable standard. I fly BA J, a lot, and I have great affection for BA, but it is chaotic boarding at LHR. No point blaming the gate staff, it is always the same, long unstructured process where they beg for people to check carry on bags. They use up every second of the padding on the flight time and inevitably I spend 40 minutes at the gate. The absurdity of this new policy is mind boggling, groups 1 to 3 are comingled in one queue anyway so that’s a joke to start with. Are BA basically saying anyone with GGL will be a massive A Hole and be pricing through the group 1-3 queue saying DYKWIA. Operationally BA, including lounges, are a mess. I freely admit, I Still love BA, but I would not ever take my children or recommend my friends or family fly BA J or F. I love flying and airports so for me it is all interesting and enjoying, I suspect it may be some sort of Stockholm syndrome.

  • JF says:

    11 Sep11 September 09:42

    I am so with you on this. I use BA Club Europe constantly given where my business operates, and I have now given up. My next five return trips this Autumn have all been moved to LH/LX (despite a relatively mediocre business class experience) as I am just sick to the back teeth of the complete degradation of BA’s service. Cramped and untidy aircraft, no real personality any more, constant delays, poor lounges at LHR (and overcrowded too). I flew BA Club World to and from the USA over the past few weeks a couple of times and it was barely any better – boarding in Chicago was a shambles. In case anyone wonders why this annoys those of us buying Business or First, it isn’t because of any sort of superiority complex it is actually because we PAY for a service (and a lot of money too) and we’d actually just like to receive the service we PAY for. That surely isn’t a lot to ask, clearly with Group 0 BA’s most loyal and highest yielding pax are finally being given some additional lip-service. How it works in practise will be another matter entirely given my own recent and numerous experiences.

• Chris in Makati says:

  10 Sep10 September 22:55

  Unless I’m flying a class of travel which gets me a glass of champagne after boarding, I have little interest in being one of the first to board. I don’t see any point in rushing to get into a seat which I’m going to be stuck in anyway for the next few hours.

  I’m far more interested in being one of the first off the plane.

• vlcnc says:

  11 Sep11 September 10:12

  I think the best way which to board which is a slight compromise is from back of the plane to front like Icelandair do it – this feels the most efficient while allowing people together to board at the same time. You are right though whatever the rules, enforcement probably would help but BA isn’t alone in this tbqh.

• Ray says:

  11 Sep11 September 13:38

  Why dont all airlines fill the plane from the rear first. Delays are caused by people filling the overhead lockers and holding people up who want get past. Seems too simple

  • Rob says:

    11 Sep11 September 13:52

    Because the lockers would all be full before 75% of people had boarded, and those boarding last would be those paying the most (ie sitting at the front).

    However, the real reason this doesn’t work is that the ONLY way to speed up boarding is to have multiple people sitting down at the same time. This doesn’t happen if you board by row or group of rows.

    The Steffen method, which I mentioned in the article, is actually more detailed than my summary. What you do is board every other row by window / middle / aisle, so:

    Window – even row
    Window – odd row
    Middle – even row
    Middle – odd row
    etc

    This allows people to slot straight into their seat and, by using alternating rows, means that you’re not slowed down by someone standing directly next to you.

  • will says:

    11 Sep11 September 22:42

    A queue might be stopped by someone putting a bag into the overhead locker (or generally just faffing about before sitting down, which is fine, it’s pretty normal to one extent or another) but it isn’t the actual cause, the cause is not having everyone whos stood in the isle either making progress towards their seat or actively stowing a bag or manoeuvring out of the isle to their seat.
    The only way to achieve that is to come up with a boarding plan that allows a near full isle of people to enter the aircraft at one time (roughly 1/6 of a narrow body at once) and to enter in a manner that someone at the front isn’t boarded in front of someone at the back. Then to repeat that process 6 times until the plane is full.

    You wouldn’t need to separate groups sat together, you’d just need to make sure that no more than a set number of people from their section of the plane was sent down at any one time.

    The sticking point will always be getting people to comply, maybe give them a tier point for boarding correctly.

• Jasbir says:

  11 Sep11 September 19:33

  One of the reasons the overhead lockers get filled up is that that BA do not enforce the hand luggage size strictly. It is really annoying to see some passengers bringing in enormous trolly bags or rucksacks when you have stuck strictly to the specified size for hand luggage.

• Derek Scott says:

  12 Sep12 September 11:53

  It’s as though BA were listening.. front and back door boarding on the 1443 EDI_LHR this morning. Arriving flight landed 20 mins late and so far doors not yet closed for 1130 departure (it’s 11:50), but much better, quicker boarding and no long slowqueue at front door.. 1-19 front, 20 up at back. Nice one…. Please keep it this way!!

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