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Qantas is rolling out group boarding across its domestic 737 and A330 flights from Australia’s four biggest airports.
This is the first time group boarding has been used by an Australian domestic carrier, and follows a “series of successful trials” in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, which Qantas says demonstrated a positive effect on on-time performance.
Instead of boarding all at once, passengers will be assigned groups based on cabin, frequent flyer status, and seat position, with groups to be displayed on boarding passes. Customers will be alerted at the gate and through the Qantas app when their group is ready to board, and boarding pass scanners will not allow boarding before a customer’s group is announced.
“We’re continuing to look for ways to respond to pain points and improve the travel experience for our customers,” said Qantas Domestic CEO Markus Svensson.
“Group boarding is designed to minimise the time our customers spend waiting to board and allows them to get settled more quickly. We know how important on time departure is to our customers, so this process is also about doing everything possible to ensure we depart on time.”
According to Svensson, group boarding will smooth out the customer journey and gate experience for passengers.
“Group boarding is a more structured approach that allows us to streamline the boarding process,” he said.
“It also prevents customers from needing to queue up all at the same time as we will call people for boarding based on their group, which will make it more smooth, less congested on the aircraft and helps us to depart on time.”
Group boarding will be implemented progressively across the four major airports, with Brisbane commencing 3 June, Perth from 10 June, Melbourne from 17 June, and Sydney from 25 June.
Qantas says it will “give people time to become more familiar” with the process before rolling it out with other airports and potentially other aircraft types.
“Our 737 and A330 fleets cover most of our Domestic operations and are larger aircraft with most room for improvement of boarding times. Focusing on two specific aircraft types will enable us to refine the group boarding process,” the Flying Kangaroo said.
Group boarding was tested starting last year, and will be the biggest change to Qantas boarding procedures in a decade.
The rollout comes not long after Virgin passed Qantas to become Australia’s most on-time domestic airline group in April 2024, ending a 19-month streak for the Flying Kangaroo.
