More BA news: punctuality, new A380 First, free messaging, new website, GGL changes

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• VinZ says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:26

  I’m not sure what the announcement for premier customers was. Group 0?

  • Rhys says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:27

    New first group to board.

    • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

      6 Mar6 March 07:43

      They’re going to have to be chaperoned to achieve that with the now-established expectation that gates are a scrum

      • VinZ says:

        6 Mar6 March 14:32

        They still manage to do it in London, but abroad it’s always a nightmare, especially when you have to board a bus to get to the plane…

• Paul says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:37

  My issue with boarding groups is that it doesn’t work now, so why add yet more complexity to a broken system. Who is advising them, who is telling them it’s working?

  It’s the Wild West for boarding generally with staff calling groups 1-3 resulting in 75% of plane heading to the door. Even then no one is ever turned away.

  In T3 it’s even worse, with signs herding you into 1-3 or 4-9 to access a gate lounge!! It’s mental! When the time comes the staff simply open the doors and stand back leaving the hoards to board as they wish.

  I have no gripe with the concept, but its execution by BA at home and overseas is chaotic at best.

  • Steve says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:44

    Agree with wholeheartedly.

    It’s a nonsense as it is, both UK and overseas in my experience.

  • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:46

    I like boarding groups because it gives those of us who want to pay for it (via cash ticket or elite benefits) the opportunity to sidestep airport inconvenience. But it no longer fulfils that purpose most of the time.

    Honourable mention to my last T5B departure. I arrived to the gate with it saying Gate Open to find people being turned away. The gate agent must have seen my printed boarding pass from the F wing and said “Group 1? You can come now” then made the announcement for Gp 1 only. Maybe that was luck on my part than useful operating procedure as perhaps the scrum ensued behind me.

  • Bluekjp says:

    6 Mar6 March 07:56

    I travel Club Europe at least weekly and its a very long time ago that groups 1 to 3 were called simultaneously. In my experience, group 1 alone has been called up first without exception for a long time now, and what’s more, given a reasonable time to board before calling the next group. It is much improved and works well nowadays.

  • lumma says:

    6 Mar6 March 08:08

    I don’t understand why they need 9 boarding groups for short haul. I’m sure when they first started with the numbers it was five. 1. Club and Gold, 2. Silver, 3. Bronze, 4. Regular economy, 5. Hand baggage only.

    This made sense as it added a little jeopardy to hbo tickets as being last on you might have been told to gate check your carry on, so the upgrade to the regular economy ticket might be worth it to avoid

    Does anyone understand them now? Is it back to front after elites now as I’ve twice been in group 9 recently (no status Avios ticket)

    • Rob says:

      6 Mar6 March 08:16

      The key benefit seems to be to give them more scope when confiscating hand baggage. It they are 15 bags over, they take from Group 9, then Group 8 etc etc.

      If they only had 5 groups there would usually be too many people in Group 5 and you’d need some sort of lottery to decide whose laptop got trashed in the hold.

      Based on recent flights of mine, only group 1-3 can be guaranteed not having their hand baggage taken away.

      • Paul says:

        6 Mar6 March 08:23

        But the hand baggage issue should be dealt with at conformance, not at the gate. Boarding is a critical element of the departure process and should be free of unnecessary activity. The agents only role should be to board and by group number. Transfer passengers from long haul will, by default have more hand bags, so let them keep them. But rigorously enforce size and weight issues for London joiners or offer free bag checkin before they pass security. Leaving this to the gate isn’t working and now savvy travellers take the tags off on the jetty or simply take them on board

        • vlcnc says:

          7 Mar7 March 17:02

          I don’t know why BA don’t announce free bag check at the check-in desks more often – they must know by the desks open what the plane loading is like. Its happened only once or twice. It would make boarding a lot less fraught and easier – easyJet quite often sms or email message in advance notifying customers if a flight is particularly busy.

      • FatherOfFour says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:00

        I had bag removed at conformance when travelling as group 3. Didn’t have the cajones to challenge “I’m group 3”
        Flight was a full A319 and all 4 of us in our group had max sized baggage.

      • Toby says:

        6 Mar6 March 10:44

        Laptops cannot be stowed in the hold, they can only be carried as hand luggage.
        See Dangerous Goods Regulations.
        Lithium Batteries require immersion in a metal bin or canister of water in order to cool them & control the fire.
        Cabin Crew cannot access the hold inflight, hence laptops cannot be placed in checked luggage.
        MELTS must be removed from Hand Luggage checked into the hold.
        (Medication, Electronics, Lithium, Travel Documents/Keys).

  • Andrew. says:

    6 Mar6 March 08:27

    If you’re travelling on domestic routes, on a Friday/Sunday then you’ll likely find only a tiny proportion of passengers don’t have status.

    At least on the inbound from Edinburgh they tend to use both doors to load so it halves the time required at Heathrow. It might even be better than halving, as passengers boarding at the back won’t stop and use the first empty bin slot as they know they’ll be exiting from the front so will hurry forward to their seat before stowing.

• Wotsit says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:51

  If the aim is “ allow passengers to self-service 100% of the time”, may we then be able to book the return leg for a BA AMEX Companion Voucher at the release time of midnight, rather than wait for morning to ring the call centre? And especially when the return leg is from a different airport?

• Degsy says:

  6 Mar6 March 07:54

  Is it just me who (mis)read that as massaging initially? I suspect it was

  • Andrew J says:

    6 Mar6 March 11:43

    Lamenting the good old days of the Upper Class inflight beauty therapist.

• Liz says:

  6 Mar6 March 08:04

  Where do you go to check up on a claim for a cancelled flight. I put my claim number in the chat box and it says the claim is closed even though I havent received any emails from BA other than the original confirmation of a claim received. Is there an email or phone number to make more enquiries? I also have 2 other claims that just say they have been merged – again no emails received. These are all claims from last summer. Thanks

  • Colin MacKinnon says:

    6 Mar6 March 11:15

    Just start a new claim, and reference the old claim number in the comments. I just did that for an overnight at LHR and was settled in days.

    • Liz says:

      6 Mar6 March 15:17

      Ok thanks Colin. I’ll give it a go!

• Andy says:

  6 Mar6 March 08:13

  Rob

  Any thoughts on what the 5000 tier points rewards might be?

  • Rob says:

    6 Mar6 March 08:14

    No

• John says:

  6 Mar6 March 08:13

  No mentioned that the paid for WiFi is so awful you couldn’t stream anything on that. Like a mis-selling scandal!

• Luca M says:

  6 Mar6 March 08:44

  I am guessing a lot of the people speculating on how “only messages@ wi-fi would work have never used the current paid for Wi-Fi: it already offers two levels of access, on SH it is “from £2.99” for messages services only (like what has been announced here), and “from £4.99” for full wi-fi access. The “from” is key as it refers to 1 hour only access, and on longer SH flight it can be £11.99 for a full flight access (in reality it gets turned on around 10 minutes into the flight, and off 20 minutes before landing).

  • IanT says:

    6 Mar6 March 09:01

    Aren’t various airlines slowly but surely rolling out free wi-fi for loyalty scheme members? I recently flew back on SQ from Singapore and w-fi was free for all KrisFlyer members, and I read that Delta have now launched free wi-fi too.

    It seems to me, not for the first time, that BA is behind the curve again here…

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