Originally Posted by
chriswiles
Yes, one of my pet hates. Nothing worse than being group 1/2/3 and being let through early, only to walk to the plane and stand in a very warm jetbridge with no aircon, for 20 minutes, waiting for the plane to be prepped. I don't get that.
Another pet hate of mine is the bus to the plane. I've never fully understood this. Again they proudly board group 1/2/3 and then leave you on a very warm bus whilst they then cram on as many other passengers as you can. You get moved down the bus to accommodate and then find that you're one of the last to get off the bus, often behind most of the economy passengers. So weird. Surely it would be wiser to board group 1-3 business customers onto a bus, even if it's not full, get them to the plane, board, then the next appears after? Or what's the point of priority boarding.
It's about punctuality targets and cost. As well as apportioning blame when punctuality targets aren't met. Current trend from ground staff is putting delays onto crew. If ground staff have the passengers through the gate onto jetty then the time you go through gate is logged, and then ground staff can say they boarded on time but the crew aren't ready so the crew gets the delay.
Every delay is managed now and SCCMs have to justify their delays, otherwise it goes against them during any performance management process.
Nowadays, ground staff are shifting the delays to crew even for things like rotational delays....and then sccms have to spend their time off writing to management to justify and try get that delay removed from their names.
So SCCMs will now board as long as it's safe to do so, all other elements e.g. prep ground service catering is just nicety.