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

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• Sam says:

  9 Sep9 September 20:42

  What you mentioned in the last paragraph reveals the real problem of the dysfunction of BA’s boarding process. I hate to say this but either the gate agent lacks common sense or this is how they are trained.

  Boarding two groups simultaneously to one gangway (a narrow body aircraft) makes no sense.

  Looking at Japan Airlines’ boarding system- it has always been the most efficient one because passengers arrive at the gate with plenty of time and diligently follow their assigned boarding groups. You rarely see a family of four carrying four individual cabin suitcases holding everyone up to board the plane like what happens every time I travelled with BA

  • meta says:

    9 Sep9 September 22:30

    JAL domestic and short to medium-hail flights are boarded within 10-15 minutes and gate opens at max 20 minutes, sometimes even later. I once boarded 5 minutes before the departure time and flight still departed on time.

    People crowding and loitering around gates is what causes mayhem.

    • will says:

      10 Sep10 September 00:29

      I couldn’t agree more and if you want to see it evident elsewhere in airports in the western world look at how many people actually observe the line around the baggage carousel designed to give the person who’s bag is on the belt the ability to approach and remove it. People seem to think it designates where they need to stand and wait in front of everyone else while there bag isn’t on the belt.

      Absolutely drives me nuts how airports don’t make efforts to try and get the message across on queuing to board and waiting for luggage.

    • The Original Nick says:

      10 Sep10 September 09:16

      Agreed. I usually check the seat map. That determines when I board.

• Nolly says:

  9 Sep9 September 21:20

  Best way to board without hussle is board the plane without any overhead luggage racks. All back packs go under the seats. No luggage allowed on planes

  • will says:

    10 Sep10 September 00:31

    Passengers and airlines don’t want that though as it adds to check in / bag drop waits, handling charges / delays.

  • The Original Nick says:

    10 Sep10 September 09:13

    Exit row and Bulk head seats do???

• Scott says:

  9 Sep9 September 21:41

  I do feel that on domestic routes, Group 1 seems to have a heavy load of AU pax that are generally not flyinbg business. I feel Group 1 should be simply the people flying in business on that aircraft, Group 2 can be all the AU holders that are not. Simple.

  • will says:

    10 Sep10 September 00:34

    If the goal is to board quickly, and assuming your short haul aircraft is boarding only through the front door, you probably want to send a bunch of people down to the back first before you board the business passengers and let them faff about putting luggage away while business does the same.

• Kevin says:

  10 Sep10 September 00:16

  At Belfast City Airport, the LHR flight is always from the same gate and has been for 20 years. Those of us with lounge access board directly from the lounge to the gate/jet-bridge usually just before Group 1 is called. So I guess we’ve had an unofficial Group 0 first! The lounge staff have been known to allow you to stay in the lounge to eat/work and will come get you if you wish to board last.

• Paul says:

  10 Sep10 September 00:28

  Group 0 isn’t supposed to fix the boarding groups issue. Further changes are planned to help with that.

  • lcylocal says:

    10 Sep10 September 09:35

    Interesting. At least the fact it doesn’t really work is on the radar then.

    In my experience part of the problem is that following the proper process is seen as a barrier to on time performance. In reality I don’t think that’s true. As a passenger I don’t see the stats, but from what I observe at T5 below the wing issues, including getting on stand cause the most problems. This is probably followed by crappy IT (seemingly minor problem block a boarding lane for a several minutes while gate agent furiously taps away), then too much hand luggage. In fact the only significant delay caused by boarding I’ve had was where somehow BA centrally managed to delete all the pre-submitted API data and the gate agents had to gather it all again during boarding.

• will says:

  10 Sep10 September 00:40

  For boarding, you broadly want to send a small sample of the plane in back to front at a time.
  EG queue 10 people from the back 10 rows, 10 people from middle 10 and 10 people from the front 10 and then repeat that process in the queue.

  Realistically that’s 3 lines of people, and you do the mix as you board.

  That way, in theory very few people are in your way for each 30 people boarding at a time. You trial it, play with the numbers, adjust for multiple entry aircraft treating each entry as a separate aircraft.

  Of course it requires strict compliance on queue formation at the boarding gate.

• Lady London says:

  10 Sep10 September 01:40

  Of course not Nick They’d then have to wait too long at the luggge belt to retrieve them. And the plane wouldn’t be able to depart on its next rotation because crew had to deplane and collect their luggage. Oh, and get it put back in the hold again.

  I do agree though that crew should spread their luggage out around the cabin. It”s really annoying to sit in Row 1, where you have to put your luggage up due to it being an emergency exit, only to find the first few seats’ worth of locker space already 1 row away from your row has been filled with crew luggage before anyone boarded.

  • Gareth says:

    10 Sep10 September 10:36

    Crew should put luggage at back, they are last off

    • AL says:

      10 Sep10 September 19:01

      Or in the hold… rarely need access on the domestics.

• Suzy says:

  10 Sep10 September 11:15

  I think boarding by row – back of the plane first obviously – worked best…

  • will says:

    11 Sep11 September 22:48

    As counter intuitive as it seems it might actually be the slowest, and a random selection might actually be an OK solution to the problem.

    Why?

    If you board row by row from the back first, you immediately create a 6 person queue at the back of the plane. Everyone has to wait for the back row to sit down before they can move forwards, then the next row etc.

    What you do is absolutely ensure only 1 person at a time can sit down.

    At least when you board randomly some people are going to the back, while others are sitting at the front so you have multiple people stowing and sitting at the same time.

    The optimum would be to have someone sitting in every row simultaneously.

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