Originally Posted by
brunos
For family and business reasons, I have done quite a few ORY-NCE lately.
As Mokshu otfen states, punctuality is a distinct advantage of EZE. My last experience of boarding with AF is typical. IN ORY, there was no Skypriority and just a big melee before the counter. By the time I fought my way there was no newspaper left. Boarding was very slow and we departed ten minutes late because of it. Today from NCE, the aircraft arrived 15 minutes late (captain said because of missing pax at boarding). Watching through the window, I could see the last pax disembark from the arriving aircraft, but it took over fifteen minutes before boarding started, probably due to plane cleaning by local airport staff. Skypriority was enforced then everyone else boarded. I boarded early and could grab a French newspaper, but I then witnessed how slow boarding was on a A321. I sat next to the standing FA in row 10. She kept trying to answer requests of pax to sit together. Very charming but slowing the boarding process significantly so that it took 25 minutes. Hence we doubled the initial delay of the incoming aircraft to 30 minutes.
It is one thing to shorten the official turnaround time, it is another thing to have the staff trying seriously to enforce it.
EZE is much more efficient. Staff work hard to speed the process and boarding by front and back door of the airplane makes a big difference. And FA help clean the plane of newspaper and the like.
PS: Orbitmic, I did find the escalator when arriving from gate A14 and above.
Glad you found the escalator! I agree with you that boarding on AF seems to be slower than (not just U2 but) many other airlines. This is all the more striking that AF never seems to implement new tactics to supposedly improve efficiency (no more BP checks onboard, seat row numbers etc). In effect, it seems to make little to no difference
And indeed, NCE is one of the best stations for Skypriority boarding enforcement. They do tend to mean it which is not the case everywhere (and indeed, ORY is one of the culprits here which is very odd as AF is alone in its parts of the terminal and could thus implement whatever infrastructure it wants for SP to be efficient.