BA's new boarding policy - I don't understand why people are upset?

[dowie]

apparently there are not to be 5 numerical classes for the purpose of boarding, supposedly there has been a **** storm on twitter and the press are now portraying this as an angry reaction from customers - I do wonder if they're trying to make a story out of nothing by focusing on angry reactions from a small minority:

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel...rd-provokes-anger-basic-economy-a8067061.html

You’re only buying the flying: that's the deal when you book a Basic Economy ticket on British Airways. To qualify for BA’s lowest fares on domestic and European flights, you surrender the right to check in a bag and pre-select a seat. And, from 12 December, you'll be last to board the plane.

On that day, British Airways brings in a group-boarding system “to further improve the customer journey”. Your boarding pass will be marked with a group number between one and five. The priority enjoyed by elite-grade frequent flyers and business-class travellers, as well as families with young children, will continue. The significant change is in economy.

Up to midnight on 11 December, for boarding purposes, all BA’s economy passengers are created equal. But from the following morning, some will be less equal than others. Anyone who has a ticket from the cheapest category, Basic Economy, will be assigned to group five. They will be last to board, making what some have called a “Walk of Shame” along the aircraft aisle.

I mean we already have first class, business class, premium economy and economy... surely adding a 5th class by breaking down economy into regular economy and some basic economy ticket that doesn't allow for checked bags is hardly changing much?

Is anyone on here genuinely miffed about this?

 

[dowie]

Who cares if you're first/last to board? It's not like you lose out on a seat.

sometimes preferable not to be last on the budget airlines as there often isn't any overhead luggage space left as plenty of people bring on oversized bags and the airline staff can't be bothered checking them

Am I the only person who prefers to get on the plane last?

sometimes, especially if you've got an allocated seat in economy anyway

however the lounge might well be some distance from the gate and having to mill around at the gate/join the queue or sit and watch the queue from some uncomfortable airport seat/bench before boarding last probably isn't as preferable as boarding first without a queue and sitting in the big comfortable 1st class or business class seat

 

[dowie]

This is disgusting and no different to when black people had to travel at the back of the bus! I hope Ofjet come down on BA like a ton of bricks for this outrageous practice.

I think you're becoming too obvious with this stuff... as if the pro-Mugabe stuff wasn't obvious already

I'm agreeing with the minority here because it smacks of hierarchy, a viewpoint that comes across as being a bit backwards imo.

Smacks of? It quite literally is hierarchical and has been for some time, main addition here is that economy is getting divided into two classes for the purposes of boarding... I don't really see what is wrong with companies providing more for people who pay more

I mean in other news you can get a bigger cabin on a cruise ship by paying more, or a bigger hotel room with a nicer view, or a better car from the same manufacturer or faster graphics card...

 

[dowie]

You'll be able to pay £10 or whatever when you get your boarding pass for "Early Boarding" or however they choose to style it. The purpose of the bottom tier is to act as a stick to get people to buy the tier above that for extra money. Someone will be getting a nice bonus for this.

Are you sure that is an option? Surely you'd just buy the regular economy ticket. More likely it is just to compete with the budget airlines where people usually just take carry on etc... there are plenty of passengers who don't need hold luggage and are price sensitive, if BA can price these special budget seats competitively enough to compete with easyJet and Ryan air (albeit without causing their usual passengers who check in luggage to then pay the cheaper rate) then they're perhaps onto a winner

 

[dowie]

Wow.

?

 

[dowie]

Btw, I got on a BA flight yesterday and they still bundle the World Traveller and World Traveller Plus together just the same. They always call the Firsf Class then Business Class First and then I did also notice families got to skip the queue but everyone else got on at the end, no different and didn’t really care.

this new policy doesn't apply until later in December

 

[dowie]

So it's not newsworthy, but it's threadworthy? Okay.

Who said it wasn't newsworthy?

 

[dowie]

I wouldn't necessarily assume that his flights are confined to working days... plenty of people might fly on say Sunday evenings etc.. too

then again one guy I know used to fly every Monday morning and Friday evening to the same European capital then spend the weekend in London with the wife/kids - he racked up some serious airmails/hotel points

it also isn't as bad as it sounds - once he was over there staying in a city centre hotel his commute to the office was about 2 minutes... add in the time wasted on flights and actually his total hours commuting for the week as a whole was probably about the same if not less than plenty who have bought a house in some commuter town outside London and had to get train + tube every morning/evening

 

[dowie]

^ this is very much the case on a lot of flights.

I don't have much sympathy for some people though as their carry on is often way too big, or families take advantage use their kids as one of the baggage allowance. So a whole section of bins is taken up by one family.

I'm gold anyway so glad this doesn't affect me

eh? - if the kid has a seat on the plane then that shouldn't make any difference - also hardly taking advantage, presumably the kid has a few sets of clothes and maybe a couple of books or games etc..

 

[dowie]

I haven't read all the thread but what i expect will happen will be that peasant class will cost the same as economy now and economy will just go up in price

unlikely, the point of the economy class without checked bags is to compete with budget airlines, they can't do that very well if they stick the prices up by much