vernonc

Two suggestions here
1) AC should enforce its priority boarding call. Right now it depends on how the GA seem to enforce, some are lax and some are rigid. Be consistent and some of the milling around issues should be solved.
2) For the wheelchair crowd, offer a language based solution. Offer to cart them all on on one golf cart all the way to gate with a language speaker for that destination flight eg Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi. Or they can wait for individual wheelchairs. I believe these folks will jump on the language help with companions, rather than the wheelchair. I do not really care when they board so long as we clean up the bottleneck.
3) If you want the wheelchair policy enforced on both ends (boarding an deplaning), take the boarding passes from the wheelchair pax when they board and they have to wait till the end to deplane. Yes, I know I will get flamed but enough with the jetway Jesus. If you needed a wheelchair to board, you likely need one after a TATL/TPAC flight.

Fizzer

My daughter has CP and we would frequently find wheelchair parking occupied. The real issue is not the distance to the mall but the extra space needed to unload, open a wheelchair lift etc. My approach was to check if the vehicle had a placard and if not, and there was nothing else available, I would park right behind it and block it in, at least while I unloaded and got my daughter indoors. I f the driver returned and complained my response would be that the alternative would have been to call the police , with the resulting $200 fine, so I had actually done them a favour.

As for boarding planes we were typically first on and last off and I had no problem with the latter. If we arrived too late to preboard ( because we were last off our connecting flight) we would have to wait until everybody else had boarded, so as to not delay everybody else from boarding.

One other observation, however, is that you cannot tell if someone needs a disabled spot based upon just looking at them. For example, if I took my daughter to a birthday party at a restaurant in the mall, you might see me with her when we arrived but not when I returned to the vehicle after dropping her off, nor again when I returned to pick her up. If you jumped to conclusions you might assume that I was abusing thee parking placard because you did not have all of the facts.


Am I saying that there is not abuse of these types of accommodations made for those in need? Of course not. whether in airports or parking lots I am absolutely sure it happens and quite frequently perhaps. All I am saying, however, is that it is really easy to misinterpret what you see and make assumptions on only partial facts.

karachi

its not an Indian/Chinese thing only. take a flight in summer to any European destination and there are plenty of wheelchairs lined up. and yes, i have seen miracles happen upon landing in YYZ with them ..

vernonc

Yes, agree. Just the wheelchair volumes are higher to Asia. And some of the European routes also have high feeder traffic specially during the winter months. LH thru FRA being a good example. And the wheelchair issue is not just AC, same applies to 9W and other carriers.

yyznomad

I have found of late that quite often the stanchions are not used to denote the Priority Boarding side vs. cattle side. In addition, I find that GAs recently have not given much of a d@mn when it comes to the boarding process.

Also, once in awhile at the YYZ int'l terminal gates, there are no line dragons (usually concierge staff) policing the priority boarding lanes. When this happens it is a flood and the GAs scanning BPs don't give a d@mn either.

dave0823

Ben stated awhile back that boarding will soon commence by Zone. It's been months since he stated this, and until this is implemented, we will have this boarding fiasco.

Even if we move to boarding by Zone, it will still be up to the GA to enforce - and I don't have a lot of confidence this will change.

yultraveler

Well it has been proven that the fastest way to board a plane was random boarding. Zone or Group boarding was shown to be be the slowest. Luckily on my flights 75+% of the pax are elites, so we use the random priority boarding approach!

Sean Peever

I will admit I have never done a time & motion study on airline operations (although I would love to one day!)

However, how much of an impact does boarding time really have if any at all to getting out on time? Between inspecting the plane, loading luggage, pilots doing final checks and calculations, flight crew arriving late, cleaners behind schedule or off pace, meals arriving late from the catering company, cargo loading and unloading, etc. I can't imagine that boarding holds up many flights at all.......and if it did then why wouldn't they just start boarding a few minutes earlier?

Oh and lets not forget fuelling time! I read that it takes AC 50min to fully fuel a 777.

yultraveler

Luckily the study has been done! The research claim that random boarding can but boarding time by 4 or 5 minutes. Another research from Boeing is claiming that boarding time doubled since the 70s (30-40 minutes to board 140 passengers up from 15 min in the 70s). Here is an interesting article on the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/bu...pagewanted=all

I'm mostly flying AC routes to US and those 4-5 minutes would make a difference when AC is trying to quickly turn the flight around when the inbound is slightly late. We would leave on time instead of 5 minutes late.. But in the grand scheme of things it would probably not make much of a difference unless the delay cause to miss the departure slot for take off.

However, if they would limit the carry-on to 1 item per person and each pax would check his roller, we would save a lot of time and make the boarding process more enjoyable...

Jasper2009

Sure, but all the studies I've seen on this topic assume that all pax are equally knowledgable / capable of finding their seats / storing their hand baggage without causing a delay. That's far from accurate.

tyberius

I have flown to Kiev a few times and a recent experience intersects this post.

I have flown Dubai to Kiev, and at the gate, they made no announcement. The agent just went over and opened the gate and all hell broke loose. Mad dash to get on. I thought it was an interesting way of managing the issue that nobody is going to listen to what the agents say on a flight to Ukraine. So they made no effort whatsoever.

I've seen them get up and start unloading the overheads a few seconds after touchdown with the plane still decelerating on the runway. This is done so that when the plane does stop they can sprint ahead and maybe get past 5-10 rows before other people get up and start going for their luggage.

If they are quick enough they can get their stuff out of the bin before the FA yells at them to sit.

I've been on flights where people were pushing to get out of the plane. I mean, single file on a plane and we're all headed to the bus to take us to the terminal. And people behind me with a hand in my back pushing. Of all the futile things.

Anyway, just was on AF headed to Kiev and the agents went through everyone in the queue (well before any announcement that it's ready to board) saying please everyone sit down. Of course everyone pretended not to understand english or french and just stood there.

Agents next went through the queue person by person checking boarding passes and directed anyone with row 20+ to proceed to board. I was stunned to see the gate agents taking charge. We need more of this kind of thing. I respected those agents for not taking crap from the passengers and for enforcing the boarding protocol.

Jasper2009

While boarding may become marginally faster, I'd no longer be able to travel with hand baggage only and as a result wasting ~30h-40h per year waiting in queues / at the baggage carousel, so a big from me.

zsm1928

With all these complaints about wheelchairs, you should see RSW and TPA in March. I have seen over 30 wheelchairs lined up to board just like a column of tanks going to battle.