WHBM

Rather a mixed up article in the Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...of-delays.html

"But Heathrow is rolling out a new system of smart boarding cards that it believes will put an end to the last-minute frantic search for lost passengers and could improve the punctuality of nearly half of flights.

Boarding passes already include a bar code in which the passenger’s flight details are embedded, including the gate and terminal....."

Can't quite see how the gate can be embedded when so many now print their own boarding passes at home the day before.

"If the passenger turns up less than 30 minutes before departure ..."

Surely Conformance has always been 35 minutes.

"The smart boarding pass is also able to redirect a passenger to the correct terminal where necessary."

Surely the security admission checker has always just picked that one up; I can't see what is particularly smart about that.

"In just one week of trials at Terminals 1 and 3, Virgin Atlantic and Little Red — Virgin’s domestic arm — found that 44pc of the 35,000 departing passengers were in danger of arriving at the gate late. About 700 were told to hurry up ...."

I find it's a complete urban legend that so many pax delay things through staying in the bar. The bulk of delays happens because the security procedures take so long because of inadequate staffing. Putting up on the FIDS that flights are 'Closing' when the inbound aircraft has not even arrived on stand doesn't help people's impressions either, nor does putting a final Gate Closing time which in practice can be seen to be a nonsense.

Tafflyer

Totally agree. Even seasoned leisure travellers realise that FIDS is used to "herd" the masses towards the gate as soon as possible, regardless of necessity. It takes a maximum of twice running through the terminal after seeing your flight as "Closing", arriving at the gate to find neither staff nor aircraft, to realise you really can stay in the bar or lounge a little longer. Routine displays of untrustworthy information dilutes its effect when genuine.

shorthauldad

How about LHR concentrate their efforts on monitoring their own performance, for instance at security screening, rather than trying to blame pax for being slow?

Every BP is already scanned at the conformance check.

So, how about scanning every BP as pax step away from security screening? Or even picking a statistically valid sample of pax?

This would allow an honest assessment of how long it takes "to get through security" unlike the bogus metrics which are currently used....

Dave Noble

There are 4 terminals at LHR, only one of which (iirc) has a conformance check

shorthauldad

Indeed you are correct ^ :-:

Out of interest, and given that this topic is currently in the BA board, what percentage of BA's flights operate to/from T5?

Dave Noble

The suggestiong that dealing with late arriving passengers is irrelevent due to every boarding pass being scanned at the conformance ignores the (majority?) of flights from Heathrow that do not depart from T5

The article reference is about Heathrow in general, not T5

layz

Although, not quite what you asked, they were for a while, in T5 at least, scanning your boarding pass when you reached the X-ray machines so they could measure the time from passing conformance to reaching the scanners.

shorthauldad

Hmm ... time to check our sarcasm detectors?

Well, I'll try again...

How about LHR concentrate their efforts on accurately and fairly monitoring their own performance, for instance at security screening, rather than trying to blame pax for being late/and or slow?

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Hope that satisfies everyone...

Slightly depressing when we, yet again, focus on the details rather than the substance of a contribution on this board. Oh, wait, I forgot, we're in the BAEC board! Now, how many Avios compo can we all get for this?

shorthauldad

...and as we all know, the delays at T5 security are always to do with what happens before the x-ray machines. Honest.

Wonder who set up that system for monitoring performance? Could it be the security team?

VC10 Boy

This technology could be useful in so many ways. Imagine if BA could push your gate details to your mobile boarding pass. It would save the yo-yo effect of up down up down to check the board to see whether I should be going to the gate. These days I save my knees and check less frequently. I may even miss the final boarding announcement and it's a long way from Lounge to T5C.

So please BA, help me to help you by sending the gate details to my phone.

layz

To be fair any delays in the screening process end up causing queues so the time it takes a person to reach the scanner will accurately measure the queues.

Once through the scanner and bags collected passengers probably wouldn't be happy with another check, they just want to get on their way.

Now for the negatives: the second boarding pass scan wasn't always conducted and I suspect BAA (as they were called then) deliberately avoided doing this at their busiest times. So therefore, shorthauldad, you were right - these checks were effectively useless, but if done correctly they didn't have to be.

ACARS

The number of late running pax (Captain PA telling us we are waiting on a few stragglers) who turn up with Full Costa/Starbucks cups does my nut in. Perhaps BP readers should be put on shop/bar entrances, within 30mins of departure entrance rejected. Go to your gate silly traveller. "Be gone with you from this retail emporium, make haste to thy metal flying capsule!"


Albeit I do really get the craving for a quick, large whiskey after passing through security some times. So perhaps I should be more understanding.

WHBM

I also noticed that for the second BP scan "at" the security belt, the operator worked well down the queue collecting and returning BPs, which therefore got registered long before you actually got to the front of the queue.

I do notice progressive increases in the security queueing time after the belt as well. There's often now a sub-queue to walk through the scanner, the x-ray items increasingly haven't come through yet by the time you get there, and most annoyingly of all, if they have been diverted to hand inspection you then may have to join a further and sometimes quite lengthy queue to wait for them to be gone through because there is only one operative doing this.

I sometimes think that if all the queue marshals were redeployed as screeners at the empty scanning stations, there wouldn't be any queue at all, nor therefore a need for the marshals.

exilencfc

It would certainly be worth using this technology to investigate bottlenecks and find out where the problems actually are - is it waiting for bag drop, going through security, waiting for buses/trains to gate areas, or what people do once actually in the terminal?

Looking at those Virgin results though it seems that the number of passengers delaying flights through arriving late at the gate isn't very high - the difference between people in danger of being late and people prompted to hurry is vast. Maybe what's needed is more information about how long it takes to get to gates? I once arrived quite late in the boarding area because we hadn't realised how far the gate was from the main terminal area.

WHBM

There are notices around Heathrow of walking time to the gates, which as ever are a ludicrous overstatement.

I've never understood why conformance time is the same whether you are heading for short-haul from the A gates or a flight right down at the far end of C - a silly "one size fits all" approach.

I have to say I've never noticed this happen. In my experience the bulk of the final pax are transfer pax who (by subsequent discussion with them as they get their breath back) have been stuck in the transfer security queue, or were waiting for ever for the inter-terminal bus to turn up .....