Are Delays a License to Ignore Priority Boarding?

Many airlines advertise priority boarding as a benefit of flying Business Class, holding status or choosing a premium seat. They deliver it with variable consistency.

Sometimes, priority boarding fails because the gate agents don’t actually enforce it and just let anyone board through the priority lane, regardless of their entitlement. Sometimes, they fail to actually give priority to the priority queue, boarding people in the general line while people who “should” have priority are still waiting. And sometimes, the airport staff simply pretend priority boarding doesn’t exist.

Priority boarding often goes out the window during delays

After more than 1,000 flights, I’ve started to notice a pattern here. Gate staff seem less likely to bother enforcing priority boarding if the flight is delayed.

I’m sure most frequent flyers would have seen this. A flight is running late and there’s a crowd of passengers waiting around the gate area. Once the flight is finally ready to board, the ground staff are generally more interested in just cramming everyone onto the plane as quickly as possible, so as not to delay the flight further. “Niceties” such as priority boarding – and sometimes even proper boarding announcements – become an afterthought.

Does priority boarding actually take up more time?

This begs an obvious question: Does the boarding process actually take significantly longer when staff follow the correct priority boarding procedures?

As Mythbusters famously proved in 2014, there can be a big variation in the amount of time it takes to board a plane depending on the method used.

Perhaps it does add a bit of time of to the boarding process if you call groups to come forward in multiple stages. And a higher proportion of those people boarding first are sitting close to the front of the plane. It could also add time if you have to turn away people at the gate who’ve incorrectly joined the priority line.

But I don’t think the extra time is really that significant. We’re talking seconds, or a few minutes at most.

In any case, I doubt that ignoring priority boarding is a deliberate tactic to try to get people on faster. More often, I suspect the gate staff simply forget or can’t be bothered to enforce it when they’re under pressure to get the plane on its way quickly.

The trade-off here, of course, is that the airline annoys its most valuable customers. And when priority boarding is an advertised benefit of buying Business Class, Economy X or Economy Plus, failing to provide the service devalues those products. Passengers entitled to priority boarding through status have paid for it, too – albeit indirectly.

As much as some frequent flyers might not like to admit this, I think that getting to board first through a dedicated queue also makes some people feel special. It’s an intangible thing, but that feeling reinforces why it’s worth continuing to attain status with that airline. Conversely, if you’ve spent many thousands of dollars to earn status and then end up just queuing behind everyone else anyway, you might really question why you bothered.

Should priority boarding come with fine print?

If airlines are simply forgetting to offer priority boarding any time a flight is delayed – which happens a lot – that’s sloppy.

And if it’s a deliberate tactic to try to get everyone on board faster, perhaps airlines should add a disclaimer when advertising priority boarding as a benefit. “Not guaranteed if the flight starts boarding late,” such a disclaimer might say. At least that would be more transparent.