Ireland’s Aer Lingus now boards by group number, which is a change to how things were done previously. This is designed to streamline the entire process and let AerClub frequent flyers board first.
In the past, anyone who paid for a cabin bag had priority boarding. This meant that around half or more of the aircraft was in that line, eroding the benefit for the airline’s best customers.
Boarding By Group Number
I recently headed down to Malta and got to see the new process in action. After our bus to the satellite gate area, we waited for a bit and the gate lice began to appear, hovering near the signs denoting the lines.
Curiously I noticed that the boarding pass I had produced on the app just said “Carry-on bag” and did not show a group number. In any event, it seems Aer Lingus split the boarding into three groups.
In practice, there was no pre-boarding for families with small children, which was nice to see. It was straight into a call for the first group, followed by the next and presumably the last.
Overall Thoughts
Boarding by group number can be a bit of a calamity. On airlines such as American Airlines or British Airways there are up to 10 different groups. This means either multiple PA announcements for each group, or they cut corners and announce two or three groups together.
Having just three groups keeps it simple. The frequent flyers and AerSpace/Business Class customers are taken care of, followed by all the people with carry-on bags, and finally everyone else. Not having a call for the people with kids is also a good thing as they can sometimes be quite a number of people too (for what it’s worth, I did see wheelchair passengers just being taken on board first, it wasn’t announced).
Everything seemed to flow very smoothly and there was no confusion at all. The only mildly weird thing was where the signs are set up, as it’s not immediately obvious where the 2 and 3 lane actually is at those remote gates in Dublin.
What do you think of the Aer Lingus group number boarding process? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Tesla on Airliners.net.
