As of December 12, all travelers will be assigned a group number between one and five when they check in. The group numbers are to be based on how much passengers paid for their tickets and their frequent flyer status. Group one passengers will include first-class and business flyers while those in group five will include those who purchased the cheapest, hand-luggage-only fares.
Those who require special assistance or are traveling with young children will still get priority boarding.
Following the airline's announcement, many took to Twitter to express their disapproval of the policy.
One Twitter user wrote, "Nothing quite like a British class system to let you know your place!"
Another user said, "It's very Kardashian, ostentatious about wealth and status. Everyone will know how much money you've got based on where you are in the line."
Some users have reacted more positively.
"I shall enter triumphantly at the very end wearing a shirt that says ‘Yay! I paid less than all you suckers," a passenger tweeted, while another wrote, "If some idiot pays more to sit in a stationary plane waiting for those he considered socially inferior, so what?"
According to British Airways, first and business class flyers are always invited to board the plane first and many airlines allow members of their loyalty programs to be the first to hop on the aircraft.
A spokesperson for British Airways recently said the airline was trying to "improve the customer journey by creating a number of groups to speed up the process," adding that "this method has been used by airlines around the world for a number of years, including by our partners American Airlines, Iberia and Qatar."
Aviation expert John Strickland told the Telegraph, "Such changes will always divide opinion but British Airways is simply responding to the pressures of a short-haul market dominated by low-cost carriers who fly far more customers than it does."
However, that might not be true. Studies by Northwestern University researchers and the Discovery Channel's TV series "Mythbusters" reveal that allowing passengers to board all at once and choose their own seat could could shave up to 20 minutes off boarding times.
