Jumper Jack

No I was just saying that if follow behind two rows(which takes 30-45 seconds at most) are going to hurt one's chance for making a connection- I am not sure if that is a right connection in the first place.

kwflyer

I just realized your point and edited my post while you were making your reply. . but I agree with your statement

YYT82

I sometimes book tight connections that barely meet the MCT, but I choose seat 2A/C instead of 1A/C because I can stow my bag underneath the seat in front of me. It doesn't take much to solve a potential problem, just requires flexibility.

YYT82

Yes, a self-inflicted problem.

acysb87

Exactly what I do when travelling with Mrs.acysb87 ^

canadiancow

You're being pedantic rather than looking at the point of my post.

I just looked it up, and MCT is 25 minutes. So let's go with 25 minutes. It's a legal connection. The only time I've ever been booked on an illegal connection was when a flight was cancelled, while in transit, and I had to get booked on an earlier one, which left me with something like 20 minutes in YUL.

The point, of course, is that with tight connections, anything that causes a small delay risks a misconnect.

I've missed flights by less than that. 70 minute US to Canada connection at YVR turned to 25 by a mechanical issue. I met the GAs at the bottom of the jetbridge, right after they'd closed the door.

Ten seconds earlier, and I would have caught the last eastbound red-eye out of YVR.

Instead, I had to overnight.

But that's in direct contradiction to the policy and the reasons behind the policy.

If they want to get it out as fast as possible, the proven solution is random boarding.

YYT82

Or bus gates. I've had the pleasure of experiencing a completely full A320 boarded in 4 minutes in FRA once we were bussed to the aircraft. Getting pax from gate to bus was less than 10 minutes.

kwflyer

You're playing with fire as it is if you're flying at MCT. Never mind below mct which you stated was the case. Not pedantic at all. If you fly below mct, you are likely to run into problems. Therefore having published cutoff times is perfectly reasonable for all parties. Point being that the boating process was never designed or should be used to incentivize tight or illegal connections.

Random boarding may be the fastest but it's not necessarily the most pleasant. When ac looked at revamping the boarding process a venn diagram approach was most likely used that took in account all parties interests.

In practice, Ga's uses heuristics to simplify their job. One zone for priority (especially since zone 1 is often so small and easily consolidated), one zone for special needs, one zone for everybody else.

Stranger

MCT is a ticketing issue. Not something that really concerns the passenger.

TAs are not supposed to book connections that don't satisfy it, that all there is to it. Passengers don't even need to know the animal actually exists, and most don't.

(Except when AC takes the liberty to do something else with it. Which the CTA has deemed to be illegal.)

But anyway, if you miss a fly, risk of which of course goes up as connection time gets shorter, the onus remains on the airlines to rebook you under the conditions in the tariffs. Which is only a serious problem if you depended upon an upgrade on the flight that you might miss.

Only in that case would I be seriously concerned with short connections.

ffsim

Venn Diagrams aside, if GAs are taking a very clearly defined boarding process comprised of at least 6 distinct zones and reducing it to 3, they're doing their jobs wrong. It's not up to them to change company policies at their whim.

kwflyer

I think you missed my point that canadiancow was justifying the zonal boarding process given their below mct connections they booked. It has no relevance

kwflyer

Processes and procedures are only so good if you have key stakeholder buy in.

If your frontline can't consistently and execute a process, the boarding process was doomed to fail. Don't think there's a clear consolidation to 3, but definitely of zone 1 and 2. And it seems to be working just fine for the majority of customers.

ffsim

The key stakeholders have an obligation to buy in. After all, it's their job to follow procedures; that's what they're there for. And if they refuse to for whatever reason, then management should either take corrective action or redefine the benefit. As it stands, regardless of whatever conclusions you may have drawn on behalf of the "majority of customers," certain customers are not getting the precisely-defined experience to which they're entitled.

yyznomad

+1

kwflyer

Except a ga s performance is not judged on a Single variable that you have described. Ac is too big, too complex, and likely too adversarial, to enforce compliance with such a rule given how many other objective they are juggling (which may seem at times
Contradictory). If ac wants compliance they're going to need buy in from the gas, or better yet., they should have been at the table when these job modifications were discussed and approved.

I don't think most altitude members care from what I can tell anecdotally, ft notwithstanding. Most, IME are content with boarding in either zones. There are bigger issues to deal with, and many of the ga's actions would seem to agree.