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Old Nov 30, 2009, 12:44 pm
  #12  
B747-437B
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Exile
Posts: 15,638
Originally Posted by stuart101
The airline can't be held responsable for a delay caused by the shopping habbits of its customers. This is not a problem limited to GIA, most of my BA flights to ACC have been delayed for the same reason. i am sure every flight into West Africa has the same problems.
The airline absolutely should be held responsible for a delay due to customers failing to arrive at the gate on time. The delay may not be the fault of the airline, but it is reasonable to expect that if something is a relatively common occurance then some means of reducing the impact of the problem should be found.

It was unfortunate that on the day in question, there were three issues that prevented this from being executed properly. First, gate 25 where you departed from shares a holding area with 3 other gates so it is impossible to segregate passengers by flight and identify any missing passengers prior to them physically entering the jetway. Second, the location of the gate at the absolute end of Pier 2 means that it is a solid 15 minute walk from the departure lounge and results in most passengers arriving later than they expected to after visiting Duty Free. Third, UK Border Agency was conducting embarkation checks and this caused significant delays as 27 passengers were intercepted for secondary checks, slowing the boarding process tremendously.

GIA averages 92.27% OTP from Accra and 90.22% OTP from Dusseldorf, but only 77.88% OTP from London Gatwick. There is no reason that OTP in London should be inferior to the other stations where the passenger profile is not dissimilar.
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