Originally Posted by
Zembla
I was there at the same day, around the same time. I can confirm the enormous chaos you reported. I stood there for 30 seconds to assess the situation, and I took...the regular line! I ignored Sky Priority and Parafes completely. Took me about 15 minutes, not joking.
Iv'e done this before. During extremely busy times you will see that Sky Priority and Parafes barely move, whilst the regular line actually progresses. In fact, when it's as busy as the photos you showed, the regular line is more than twice as fast. Empirically proven in the past with colleagues who used the priority lines and came through in more than double the time than me opting for the regular line.
Too bad that we missed each other in this mess. It would have made the wait more pleasant
Originally Posted by
orbitmic
Sure, LHR is already quite a bit better, but even that is a bit slow compared to the OSL and HEL equivalent which seem to work like a breeze.
Originally Posted by
NickB
IME the parafes gates are comparable to the old LHR e-gates. The new LHR e-gates are much faster and I am not sure that I notice much difference between those ones and the HEL ones (don't know about OSL).
LHR gates are indeed a bit faster than PARAFES but the difference is not huge. But I clearly prefer the LHR ones.
Originally Posted by
NickB
Fingerprint technology is always going to be more problematic with elderly passengers (tremors, difficulty in lifting the arm and keeping the hand in position, etc...). It was an issue for my mother.
You know...I think technology is a problem for many people. PARAFES has clearly some inconveniences but it is quite simple to use (it is showing you which fingers you can use). But I am very often amazed by the number of people who are completely lost, putting any finger, not looking at the very simple instructions, etc. Same for check-in kiosks : as simple as they are to use, a very significant number of people are totally unable to use them without help.
The US kiosks are also a problem for many pax, especially at the fingerprints and picture step.