Originally Posted by
CreativeBill
Given that there appears to be a one out / one in at the gates, they must see a new flight every hour or so? The gate areas aren't large, so I understand LHR not wanting to overcrowd them with pax from flights after the one departing.
Obviously this is inconvenient for those wanting to choose which lounge to go to, but I've seen research somewhere saying that up to 90% of people go to the gate as soon as it is shown.
I guess a compromise would be a
Gate XX Wait in lounge / Gate XX Go to gate display, but who knows how many people would respect that instruction?
I can imagine tirades about "
a scrum of 3,000 blocking MY gate"
That's the norm on flights to YYZ anyway.
I understand that the way LHR is run that posting the specific gate isn't really possible but I still think that it should be possible to post whether the flight(especially long hauls) is going to be leaving from A,B or C though. Sometimes on the departures board you will see one flight leaving in 3 or 4 hours posted as
Leaving from B gates while all the other flights say
Gate will open xx:xx. How can they do it for that one flight? As far as airports like MUC and ZRH that have the gate number on the BP that you've checked in 23 hours or more in advance I no longer pay any attention to them as most of the time they change anyway. Unless for example BA at MUC which tends to use the same gate and
always with a jetbridge.^