Across (nigh on) 52 years of paxing, I have seen the old, informal BOAC style but it worked because everyone behaved in a formal (i.e. polite!) manner.
I have seen boarding by :
- Row numbers
- Cabin sections
- Window/Middle/Aisle
- Front to back row
- Back to front row
- Single door for the whole 747 Economy, one door for C and F
- First Come First Served
- First Come by First Check In
- Priority of all and any variation the marketing kids can imagine
- Auto gates
- The bus-rush described above
They
all succeed or fail by Enforcement. If the Ground staff do not RIGIDLY uphold the rules and send people to the back of the queue - then it's all the same result.
We have discussed in PPRuNe before the very plausible reasons why ground staff are increasingly reluctant to enforce the rules. It will be interesting to discover what new instructions/training they are giving - especially at the outstations.
My next on BA is 3rd Dec Short haul, so I escape the implementation of this and look forward to reading the horror stories and seeing how quickly the mgmt apologise.
Lastly, have they tested this idea in the countries that don't do queueing? Italy?
