Originally Posted by
bernardd
Doesn't a flight need both passengers & crew to depart? If they're delayed, aren't any passengers connecting off the same flight also delayed?
Passengers can be offloaded, but crew members can't, unless they are over-crewed, without ending up in a cancelled flight. So the crew members are more "important" in terms of operating the flights than passengers.
Once in a while it's OK for both passengers & crew to jump the line, but there are more than a few crew that do it routinely, apparently because they don't want to waste their precious time. Well, hello, what does that say about their attitude to the poor punters who pay their salary?
I do not think it is always the case that the crew simply do not want to waste their time. There may be some crew members who have the 'wrong' attitudes towards customers, but by and large many seem to prefer to put passengers first as long as it does not impact on the on-time departure of their flight. At many airports the staff members and crew members officially have the priority on some security lines, and I think that is fair enough if that's the case that they do get the priority.
In some cases, delayed by security, they may end up needing extra time for their pre-flight duties and end up delaying the flight, and then some passengers will complain about the delay. If the OTP is important, then I think we may need to live with their jumping the queue.