Conformance now at all LHR terminals for all airlines
 

Seen this press release from Heathrow stating that they have rolled this out to T1 and T3 and will be live at T4 some time in September.

The press release states that this will build on the success of Ready to Fly (BA's brand name for conformance) at T5.

http://mediacentre.heathrowairport.c...ights-603.aspx

Well surely this depends on how fast you can run.
I can honestly say it's never taken me the quoted 15 minutes to get to any gate, no matter how slow I dawdle.

No, it depends on what the computer has defined as the conformance time. This is a media release rather than instructions on how it operates

That conformance is being rolled out to the other terminals would seem to suggest that it has been viewed as successful in terminal 5

Successful for HAL =/= necessary or helpful for pax.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B329 Safari/8536.25)

About as "bespoke" as a Moss Bros suit....

There must be some evidence from T5 that it has improved on-time pushbacks..

What will be interesting to see if the system is customisable enough so that different airlines have different conformance times. For example, Cathay operating long hauls might want to go for a 35 minute conformance period, where as Finnair operating shorthauls may want to specify a 20 minute time.

Also interesting if it's flexible enough to distinguish between those in premium cabins and those hand baggage only. However I doubt it.

My bet is on one size fits all. One conformance time for all flights. Otherwise passengers are going to get confused between airlines and terminals.

All airlines check-in desk operate latest check-in time for the issue of BP and the taking of checked bags. All conformance does is to ensure passengers get to the start of the security line before X minutes so passengers can clear security and walk to the gate. The process is the same for all flights; short or long haul.

I dont think the challenge is landside conformance; i.e. from the check-in desk. The challenge will be for terminal to terminal transfer where those airside transfer buses can be slow with long queues. I suspect conformance will be based on when the passenger gets off the bus at the departing terminal.

If anything, my complaint for a delayed LGW departure last Friday was caused by LGW Customer Services delivering two disabled passengers to the plane late. Captain had started initiating a check for their bags to unload them.

I cannot see why conformance would be different for those in premium cabins or with hand baggage only; whether in a premium cabin or taking luggage , the passenger still needs to get to the aeroplane before it departs

I would be surprised if the conformance times would be different per airline and cannot see that it would make sense

Sigh
 

Hopefully T1 conformance for regional and DUB flights will sensible....

Surely conformance cutoff for hourly A319/320 commuter flights should be a little more lenient than a for a once daily A380?

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Last Thursday it took me over the quoted 25 minutes to get down to the Irish gates in T1.

It's quite a way, maybe 7-8 minutes normal walking. However, the second photo image check along the way had a queue which stretched right back to the main departure hall, and took over 15 minutes of shuffling forward - this was contributed to by none of the Irish gate flights being shown on the departure boards until about 35 minutes before my own departure, when three flights all came up simultaneously :( . Buffoons. Then towards the end of the long route march the route suddenly had doors closed across it for several minutes while passengers from an arrival were shepherded across - they of course were trickling through in ones and twos whereas there eventually formed a considerable press of those departing, but it never occurred to have one wait for the other intermittently.

In all this there were a number of passengers headed for a Virgin flight to Edinburgh who were desperate to run for their flight but constantly delayed. I didn't see when that gate went up on the board but by the numbers I would say it was the same time as us. In the end we saw many of them coming back, the flight having been closed.

What a ludicrous way to run an airport.

It is very common (in fact the dominant model, afaik) for airlines to have different check-in deadlines for short-haul and long-haul (as well as boarding times which are different for short-haul and long-haul, incidentally). Similarly, different airlines may have different check-in deadlines at the same airport. The "one size fits all" may well be what HAL goes for as far as conformance is concerned but that most certainly not the system practised most widely at present for check-in and boarding.

HAL?
Not the same computer from the movie surely?:p

:D

HAL=Heathrow Airport Limited, née BAA=British Airports Authority.