Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
In precise terms, LHR T5 is unique, but I think the short version of obitmic's reply is "you're going to end up with some system or other, and all systems have issues". The AA door close brutalism would not necessarily have helped the OP. I think there is a fair point that when BA moved from T1 to T5, timekeeping dramatically improved, and pre-pandemic BA at T3 had poorer time. Timekeeping in the T1 set up was off the scale dreadful. I'm sure Conformance had a part to play in that improvement, but equally Conformance is less effective when everything is late, it's not agile enough. When it gets really bad BA does have the option to switch off Conformance all together. The core issue, therefore, is shoddy timekeeping and post Pandemic BA (and many other airlines) hasn't done well So far today BA is doing better than most recent days, with something like 82% On Time Departures, and 66% On Time Arrivals, but even that is well below the 2019 typical figures. Virgin, the second largest airline at LHR, has similar figures to BA at the moment.
RIP Zone R!
There are a number of modern, relatively single airline terminals / airports where it could be implemented, but hasn't.
Agreed that all of the US airports are out, mainly due to the hub-spoke model so the majority of people are already air-side and won't pass a check-point for conformance to hit.
Somewhere like MUC T2 which is virtually all LH Group would encounter the same thing - it's got to be a significant amount of Schengen originating passengers that won't need to pass through anything other than immigration (if that) to go from gate to gate.
Changi has gate security so again, wouldn't do anything in that model.
I appreciate the DfT has tied BA and HAL's hands somewhat, but I'm not convinced it is the single-handed solution to fixing the dreadful ops at T1. Arguably T5 is now just as bad, with conformance which I think proves my point that it never was the solution in the first place.