British Airways is yet again changing its boarding process, but this time, the airline is actually trying to make the process a little simpler in a bid to make the stressful job of boarding faster and customers happier.
The last change that British Airways made to its group boarding system was in March 2024, when the carrier added a new Group 0 for the airline’s ultra-elite frequent flyers, bringing the total number of boarding groups to a staggering ten.
As it stands, British Airways boards its planes according to cabin and elite status, followed by how much a passenger has paid for their ticket, with customers holding the most restrictive hand luggage fares made to board last.
Following pre-boarding for disabled passengers and parents with infants and small children, Group 0, consisting of invite-only Premier card holders, Gold Guest List, and Gold Guest List for Life passengers. are called to pre-board.
Once boarding gets underway, Groups 1 to 3 are called forward. These groups are reserved for First, Business Class, and World Traveller Plus passengers, as well as frequent flyers with Gold, Silver, or Bronze status.
From there, the airline has broken down the rest of the boarding process into an additional six groups just for its Economy cabin. A bewildering process that, it turns out, has been impacting the airline’s customer satisfaction scores.
Over the last seven months, however, British Airways has been testing several iterations of a new boarding process on a small number of routes and it’s found that cutting the number of boarding groups has made a slight improvement in customer satisfaction and slashed boarding time by nearly a third.
The changes are subtle for passengers but noticeable for the airline. Pre-boarding and Groups 0 to 3 will remain as it is today, but British Airways will eliminate Groups 7, 8, and 9.
Groups 4-6 will board the aircraft via the standard ‘block boarding’ method in which passengers sitting at the rear of the aircraft are meant to board first, followed by those in the middle, and finally, passengers sitting towards the front of the aircraft board last.
This is a boarding process used by many airlines around the world, although United Airlines is an outlier for using the so-called WILMA boarding process which stands for ‘window, middle, aisle.’
WILMA has been proven to dramatically shorten boarding times because passengers are called to the board in order of whether they are sitting in a window seat, a middle seat, or an aisle seat.
The idea is that this method eliminates the need for passengers in a middle or aisle seat to stand in the aisle and block other passengers boarding while allowing someone assigned a window seat to get into the row.
United doesn’t apply WILMA to its premium cabins or elite frequent flyers, but passengers in Economy Plus through to Basic Economy are generally boarded using the ‘window, middle, aisle’ method.
“More simple” … let’s try “simpler”
Just for Mateusz: Please use “simpler” rather than “more simple”. In the same way you’d use “simplest” and not “most simple”.
Normal rule in English: If the word is one syllable or three or more, use “er” and “est.” If it is two syllables, use “more” and “most”.
Isn’t simple two syllables?
The current method of boarding, does not allocate Groups 4-9 based on ticket value. It’s purely down to your row number in World/Euro Traveller, with the rear of the cabin being Group 4 and the front being Group 9. The changes will retain this method, but simplify it with fewer groups.
Always wondered why they don’t board passengers from the back of the aircraft to the front, this alone would end the waiting for seats to be filled.