Originally Posted by
speedbuslhr
Worldwide and Euro Fleet are all very independent. Mostly they all do their separate thing after their briefing and meet at the gate or onboard the aircraft. They do often go shopping or go the get food etc.
Mixed fleet however are much stricter. Its very rare for them to separate unless they have a long wait between flights at Heathrow. Usually they stay together all the way from Security to the gate and even after flights they stay together all the way until exiting arrivals where they can go their separate ways.
Crew usually board at -45 for SH or -60 to -50 for LH.
At outstations crew normally all stay together as its not our hub airport and every airport has different procedures. Once crew arrive at an outstation from the hotel coming back to LHR then timings are a bit more tight its usually arrive at the airport and straight to the aircraft.
I’ve seen some of the US flight attendants vlogs too and dont know how they find the time to do them.
At CityFlyer, report time is one hour before the first duty. Usually flight and cabin crew will head to the aircraft together but if one set of crew finishes their brief quickly and wants to grab something from Pret, duty free or Boots they might go on ahead. Crew should board the aircraft at least 30 minutes prior to departure. It’s all pretty slick and usually if the aircraft hasn’t been sat on the ground you’ll be boarding the incoming aircraft just as the outgoing crew are gathering their belongings. It gets pretty hectic at this moment, with cleaners, caterers and two sets of crew trying to do their thing in a small jet!
At a lot of European airports crew are driven directly from staff search to the aircraft, bypassing the terminal. At other airports the crew will generally stick together, even at the ones where transport time from the hotel is generous and allows time to pop into duty free or to grab a coffee.
Arriving back at base, LCY arrivals is so small that there’s really no opportunity to split up unless one of the crew is transferring to another duty (in which case they remain airside) or need to visit the toilet. Most turnarounds are done on the same aircraft so the crew will remain on board but where there’s an aircraft change the crew will generally set up camp at an empty gate and people will go off on their own if they need anything whilst someone watches the bags.