FTLHR

One of the conditions of the license is that the queuing area must be large enough to contain the threshold value which triggers a breach we have a 95% of timeslices in 5 and 99% in 10 framework for directs and 95% in 10 for transfers so there must be room for a 10 minute queue in the area*

If the queue is out beyond ticket presentation / conformance area then it'll be a failed time slice and the CCTV is used to manually add on the time queue before the first scan by picking a person at random on a retrospective review of the footage. Not very scientific (though that is how the whole process worked until last year) but the key thing is it's a >10 minute queue which in terms of the Service Quality Rebate is a failure on Heathrow's part and if it's 11, 12, 15 or even 45 mins doesn't "matter" from a regulatory point of view. Clearly it does from a passenger perspective and the difference between 15 and 45 is exponentially worse.

If there were a better way to measure exact queues (on a per passenger basis) to security before that point we'd be looking at using it.

*There isn't for Fast Track in T5 South at the moment but I would hope that if there was a substantial queue there between staff and passengers some overflowing into lanes 1,2 and 3 would be happening rather than having queues for pre-ticketing being extensive.

shorthauldad

Firstly, thank you to FTLHR for sharing that info ^ :-:

I find it hard to imagine who came up the regulatory framework such that there is no difference between the 11 min queue and the 45 min queue. Doesn't exactly give much of an incentive for the airport operator to do anything once the queues start to grow beyond 10 mins, HAL managers might easily decide to to ride it out and to hell with the pax who miss their flights.

Could a short peak period with 45 min queues even work out cheaper than 15 min queues for an extended period in terms of rebates due ?

FTLHR: are you able to share some (recent) observed "worst" values for queue length?

EuropeanPete

I've not really paid attention to the new South Fast-track until yesterday, but I couldn't help noticing just two possible conveyers with almost no space for queueing. I don't understand how anyone could think this is going to work.

FTLHR

From Heathrow's point of view, a 45 minute queue is a) not going to get fixed very quickly b) probably going to get a thread on here at best and potentially get us on the news at worst. The thread about T5 from early November on here being a case in point.

If we have more than 21 periods (1%)of 15 minutes in a 31 day month with the queue over 10 mins or a 108 over 5 (5%) we pay the proportion of the fine for that terminal. If T5 directs fails (which is a combined pool for North and South) that's just over a £1m a month for the 5 minute metric.

Yesterday wasn't brilliant in T5 North and South direct, there were 11 time slices over 5 mins. On 1st Dec 14 (which was the day with the largest sustained time period with long queues) there were 68.

I don't think a short peak of 45 minute queues is possible without a fairly long rise and decline either side. Another reason this wouldn't be a good strategy for the airport to take is that Q6 license is moving to a per passenger measure anyway.

The worst, that wasn't flagged as an outlier (people sometimes take a phone call in the queue and stick out when everyone else has a much shorter queue time around them) I've seen from tickets to rollers is 20 mins. top-ups hit 15 minutes on that early November day before the first scan as well.

FTLHR

This will be changing. Not sure when exactly.

EuropeanPete

When I went through they weren't scanning people's boarding passes on the second scanner, so I guess if you're only going to count some then that will help keep numbers down.

Calchas

Why would it do that?

paulwuk

If nobody is scanned, that will flag as an unusal state, and the CCTV tracking will be used.

If 5 people are scanned, or 50 people are scanned, they'll all have taken the same amount of time to get through, so the average isn't really going to matter.

Now If HAL were fast tracking 5 people to the front of the queue, scanning just those 5, and then turning off the scanners, things would be different, but I don't think that happens.

10 minutes from conformance at transfers (that's 15-20 minutes for domestics from the first ticket scan thanks to the removal of fast track) is still terrible though. That said I don't think I've ever been caught up in a 45 minute + queue, I have at other airports (NBO, GIG)

shorthauldad

It would be interesting to know what the rebate is as a % of PSC revenue.

Very very roughly: LHR claims ~100k pax/day departing, the PSC must be somewhere around £30/pax (from here, although there are four different PSC rates and I CBA to try to dig out the pax stats to work out a weighted average), so that's £3m/day or £90m/month (?)

I realise it's a bit more complicated than this. However, the rebate being somewhere in the region of ~1% for a core KPI failure doesn't exactly sound like the regulator is using a big stick.

BasilBush

The maximum potential penalty for all service failures taken together is 7% of airport charges. Historically HAL's 'fines' have been well below 1%.

Clearly, security service standards are only a small part of this, so HAL doesn't have a huge incentive to perform better. In my view, regulation of HAL should move away from the CAA's micro-management of HAL's finances (ie the current cost-plus approach), and more towards a system based on industry benchmark prices backed up by really tough service measures.

timezonehopper

Apologies for bumping this old thread but I've just had an interesting experience at T5 Fast Track. Basically I refused to scan my BP at the 2nd scan and got an unexpected response from the agent on duty there (the one that shepherds people towards a free slot). Her opening gambit was along the lines of "I've asked you to scan your BP and you must comply with my request", when I challenged this and mentioned that it wasn't for conformance her reply was something like "I'm on duty until 2pm we can wait" (it was 11am). In the end it was clear that she wasn't going to let me pass without scanning my BP which I did since, by this time, I was holding the rest of the queue up. I subsequently complained to the supervisor on duty who confirmed that I was correct.

antichef

This is why you should keep an old pass or two or your phone. The jobsworth wont know, but it will look like you have taken a week to get from conformance to security 😉

timezonehopper

That's a great idea - I never thought of that!

Worcester

Is it worth complaining to the CAA?

Takiteasy

Sounds like a great idea! I will try it tomorrow