Originally Posted by UnitedSkies
I have forever been curious about this as well - until I asked the Customer Service supervisor at the airport. He informed me that each flight gets a different sticker, solely for the purpose of allowing ground agents to easily spot "stray" passengers wandering about the terminal who have either lost track of time or have gotten lost.
He went on to tell me that a "significant" number of passengers either miss their flight, or end up dangerously close to missing their flight because they cannot pass up the many shops in the terminal area.
That's exactly the reason. I go through HKG a lot. Quite a few passengers, especially those who do not travel frequently, think as long as they make it to the aircraft by departure time, not 20 minutes prior to departure, they are ok. In HKG, you'll see quite a few ground staff roaming around trying to locate those passengers, and the frequent paging of missing passengers by name through the airport PA system in 3 languages (English, Mandarin and Cantonese).