British Airways to start boarding passengers by group from 12th December

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Following numerous trials, British Airways has finally decided to push ahead with boarding in groups. The new process will go live on 12th December.

Your boarding pass will now carry a group number.

British Airways boarding pass

These are:

Long-haul:

Group 1 – BA Gold or oneworld equivalent, First Class passengers

Group 2 – BA Silver or oneworld equivalent, Club World passengers

Group 3 – BA Bronze or oneworld equivalent, World Traveller Plus passengers

Group 4 and Group 5 – World Traveller passengers, split by row

Short-haul:

Group 1 – BA Gold or oneworld equivalent, Club Europe

Group 2 – BA Silver or oneworld equivalent

Group 3 – BA Bronze or oneworld equivalent

Group 4 – Euro Traveller

Group 5 – Euro Traveller on a hand baggage only fare

It is not clear what will happen with mixed groups – historically there has been an informal policy that children or partners could board with higher status passengers in the same group.

The key to this new policy working will be the announcements. All passengers will be expected to be seated by the departure gate. They will be strongly encouraged not to congregate by the boarding area.

Only when their boarding group is announced should they stand up and make their way to the gate. The idea is to replace what can be a scrum with a more laid back process. It will also be easier to police hand baggage, since it will be clear to boarding staff at each stage in the process how much each group should be allowed to bring on.

Will it work? We will see …..

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This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Mark says:

18 Nov18 November 10:06

The pushiest people are often hand baggage only fares, they have a reason to be because they’re worried about overhead lockers being filled up before they get to their seat.

The groups make sense but it won’t do anything to help resolve the rugby scrum around the boarding desks.

When the automated boarding gates are rolled out, i’d be tempted to board more finely grained when it comes to row numbers as the ticket barriers can reject without too much embarrassment. It would maximise boarding efficiency and over time maybe people would figure there is no benefit from loitering at the front of the queue.
John says:

18 Nov18 November 10:43

My only experience of this kind of system has been with United. If you’re in business or first and you’re not at the gate when they call group 1, it’s fine because there’s a priority line anyway. If you’re in group 4 or 5 then it seems to generally turn into a bunfight where everyone queues anyway.

I’m with the posters who’d rather get on last. I don’t mind having my hand luggage checked, as long as I remember to grab my laptop, Kindle and headphones from it.
- Nick says:
  
  18 Nov18 November 10:58
  
  That’s why they’ve left HBO till the end, they tend to have bigger bags, and are easy to identify for gate-checking of luggage. They also tend to have paid the least, which helps with the “why me?!” complaints 🙂
Brian says:

18 Nov18 November 10:44

First should be ahead of anyone else as AA do. There can be quite a few golds on longhaul.
Fenny says:

18 Nov18 November 11:35

Can’t see it happening myself. I fly maybe once a year now and it’s usually the status passengers and those with more than the alleged allowed number of hand bags who stand around the boarding gate. But unless they board from the back, you just stand in the aisle for hours behind those who don’t understand the concept of sitting down.

As for having to put hand luggage under the seat, I may not be tall, but I need to be able to stretch my right leg out to avoid circulation problems. I choose my seat according to where the supports for the seat in front are, so that I can do this. Anything that restricts where I can put my feet means I’m going to be wriggling around for the entire flight and annoying my neighbours. I don’t want that, and I’m pretty sure they would prefer it otherwise.
Planeflyer says:

18 Nov18 November 12:03

Surely on shorthual group 5 pax (with no checked bag allowance) will have more hand luggage on average than those in group 4 with an allowance? Maybe splitting pax on these line isn’t the most sensible.

I would also like to see pax in exit rows being boarded in group 2 maybe?
dicksbits says:

18 Nov18 November 12:20

The key test will be time pressures of gate agents. If a flight is late and people turn up willy nilly it will be hard to enforce. I think potentially it’s a winner for Gold and Club Europe pax. But then again they’re told to ,board at their leisure’ so how will that work? I will be curious to see if it is enforced at Gatwick which I feel is the worst offender for boarding at a BA hub..
- ChrisC says:
  
  19 Nov19 November 03:56
  
  I actually think that if the new groups are enforced that boarding will actually be quicker than a general scrum to board.
Ian says:

18 Nov18 November 13:04

Will this be the end of the “Fast Track” boarding lane at gates, so that all pax board through one lane?
Kenny says:

18 Nov18 November 13:14

What’s the difference in hand luggage, doesn’t everyone get two pieces anyway?
- pr99 says:
  
  18 Nov18 November 13:21
  
  If you are on a hand baggage only fare you will often have a larger piece of hand baggage, by boarding them last it will allow BA to cause confusion in the cabin as they try and find a bin with enough space.
- Geoff says:
  
  18 Nov18 November 14:59
  
  Priority boarding is valuable for hand-baggage-only fares as you can pretty much guarantee getting space in an overhead locker next to your seat. If you board last, and there isn’t space, your bag could end up well away from your row – if it ends up further back you have no chance of getting it once everyone has stood up on arrival. Or it gets checked into the hold and you are stuffed with a trip to the baggage carousel. If they could somehow prioritise checking excess hand baggage to those who already have checked luggage they would not suffer any additional hurt. This mostly seems a fair boarding priority to me – but good luck to those in Gp 5 on short-haul.