Originally Posted by bealine
Utter Twaddle!!!
The article/BAA stated that passenger behaviour (the number of bags they bring on board) has "created long delays at the X-ray machine conveyor belt during boarding." Unless you know better (always possible
), the number of bags per pax has not increased - it is the changes in security procedures that have created the long delays. So I think that it is correct to characterise the statement as an attempt to shift the blame to passengers.
Originally Posted by bealine
In the past week, I have personally had three aircraft delayed because there physically wasn't the space on board to accommodate the cabin baggage -a lot of the really meaty stuff coming from American Airlines' transfer passengers, and Internet Check In providing the rest!
So, the BAA have decided that the airlines can't be trusted to enforce their own handbaggage limits and are going to do it for us!
Great! I am fed up of the confrontations with you folks and I am grateful to the BAA for taking the hassle away!
As I said in my post earlier, I am absolutely no fan of passengers who attempt to bring way too much hand luggage onto flights. It makes it difficult for everyone involved. However, I really don't want BAA enforcing this, and it is annoying that they are using it as an excuse for deficiencies in the security process (and let's not forget their own baggage handling deficiencies which make people more reluctant to check bags in the first place). While I appreciate that you may not want or deserve confrontations with difficult passengers on the subject, as a passenger I would prefer that BA enforced this one. I have a greater degree of confidence in it being done in a fair and common sense manner that way.
I'd be happy to see BA crack down more uniformly on people who attempt to bring the kitchen sink on as hand luggage, while showing a little mercy to the poor sods with laptops who seem to be particularly hated by BAA.