Cultured Views

‘Priority boarding’ - the ultimate in travel snobbery or just good entertainment?

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Budget airlines such as Easy Jet and RyanAir offer little in the way of services to travellers other than a cheap way to get from A to B; sometimes on time - very often not - and has allowed Brit’s to holiday further afield and take advantage of cheap hotels in places other than the usual destinations of Spain and France.

What they do offer though is light entertainment in the form of priority boarding or speedy boarding.  This delightful innovation has replaced the old practice whereby parents with small children, elderly folk and disabled travellers were boarded first to enable young families to sit together and the less mobile to settle themselves before the other travellers boarded the plane.

In order to generate more revenue and create extreme disharmony amongst already stressed and impatient travellers PB was introduced; one pays a fee of £5 when booking online so that one can assume he/she will get on the plane first before all the other pests who had the audacity to book the same flight.

Of course, the term ‘pests’ refers particularly to parents with small children (especially babies), elderly folk and the disabled - generally everyone else but ones-self.  PB’ers like to stand in their PB queue and gaze smugly at the other non-PB’ers who have had better sense than to pay extra money for this dubious service. PB’ers assume that getting on the plane first means they wont have to sit next to a complete stranger; kind of interesting as they will already have spent some time standing and sitting next to complete strangers at checkin and the departure lounge.

They also assume they wont be sitting near a baby or toddler - so long as some arrogant parents have not gone and paid for PB as well. The entertainment starts when the call for PB’ers goes out in Departures and out of 200 people 150 come forward - smart cookies - though most of them will have assumed only they alone would be holding a PB pass. Watching the disgust on their faces as they regard their fellow PB’ers makes all the hassles associated with flying on a budget airline worthwhile.

They are herded out to the tarmac where the pack mentality sets in and the stampede begins; there are certain seats on a plane which they all want for themselves - I have never worked out myself which particular seats are so coveted - but the herd willingly push, shove and trample each aside in order to get to them…only to finish up sitting near parents with small children anyway.

Having been  PB’er’s on two occasions we are now avowed non-PB’ers; we take our time with the kids, strolling casually across the tarmac and watching our three year old taking the steps one at a time whilst pointing out the other planes to them. There’s no hurry to board in our opinion and as the PB’ers have all successfully fought for their seats we know they are happy to wait however extra time it takes for us to board and get settled.

We have only ever been faced with the problem of staggered seating once; this was easily resolved when the other passengers hogging empty middle seats towards the back overheard us discussing the implications of the extreme airsickness our two young one’s suffer when in mid-air and if there were enough paper bags available. Never have I seen so many people move to create an entire row of empty seats so fast !

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