jwhite9185

Stumbled across this a week or two back. My personal opinion is that they missed the flight due to purposely going to the wrong part of the terminal then not making conformance when trying to return - so therefore don't really have much of a leg to stand on with BA.

They seem to feel differently though.

Be interested to hear the opinions here.

https://londonspotterblog.wordpress....-this-morning/

Can I help you

I know what I think, tough luck, they went to the wrong satellite and didn't leave themselves enough time to get to the correct one.

MPH1980

Aren't there a whole bunch of warning signs around the transit that say something like "don't take this until you know your gate number?"

smokie36

I don't really understand this one.

Passenger is airside and being told to go through arrivals to get to a departure gate??

Its no more than 15 mins really easily for a fit young person to get anywhere in T5 departures.

LBA_flyer

They were the primary cause of their own misfortune.

Ldnn1

The guy tried to be clever, ballsed it up, his fault. He should let it go.

At least it was only a flight to EDI so no huge financial loss.

KARFA

The signs quite clearly say do not go to B or C if your gate is not announced and your flight doesn't go from there. Based on that if you are going to do it - as some of us FT'ers do - at least do your research first and understand how to get back whilst remaining in the departure stream.

Since the passenger was already in the arrivals stream when then realised there was a problem on returning to T5A it would not have been possible for a HAL member of staff to simply take them to the departure gate - the passenger has mixed with other arriving passengers at that stage and would have to exit landside, get the Ready to Fly notice taken off their bp, and reclear security.

Will add this to the list of moaning bloggers which I maintain

JAXBA

They mentioned something about they should have been escorted back to the correct part of the terminal, but I'm not so sure, since they had mixed with the international arriving flow of pax and were no longer 'clean' - going through the connections channel sounds like it should have worked, but they would have had to have had their previous conformance/biometric data reset.

If only they had been on FT and knew about the walkways to get back to T5A…

apollo00

I can see somewhat an argument that it's not clear if you do try and get the train back from C gates that you will end up in immigration and be treated as an arriving passenger until it's too late.

Once you've made that mistake though there's not much I can see they can do as they've little proof you're not an arriving passenger so putting you through immigration seems reasonable and the best option at that point.

Of course, you basically have to do something they tell you not to do to end up in this situation at all (ie. go to B or C when your flight isn't leaving from there) and then decide to try and fix it rather than speaking to staff.

Struggling to have much sympathy here, as always BA could in an ideal world have resolved this by bypassing conformance somehow but it exists for a reason and I've no idea if the staff on the ground even have the ability to do so (also, it's not clear cut whether conformance failure would be time-related or because that passenger has already gone through the system once).

KARFA

Yes, I picked up on this. I think that advice would have been ok if they remained in the departing passenger stream, but since they had swapped in to t the arriving passenger stream it would no longer apply and re-screening would have been necessary.

KARFA

One other observation - the blogger's reaction on leaving the airport and going for the train was completely illogical considering they were offered to rebook at £60 which is probably close to half the cost of a walk on standard class ticket to Edinburgh and would take considerably longer to get to their destination compared to waiting for the next EDI flight.

cjb666

In my opinion this is someone not taking accountability for their own actions.

corporate-wage-slave

He must have been in C way, way too late to risk missing out on conformance, but of course the passageways would have saved him if only he had known about them. Clearly he is internet savvy, just not savvy on which forum which would have helped him the most.....

smokie36

What I am getting is a poorly designed airport which can allow idiots to flourish.

No way I am saying its one person's fault here.. as you say the walkways if used would have saved the day but where are the signposts for lost or stupid pax?

Ldnn1

No pax go to C unless they're supposed to, or they know what they're doing.

There are also plenty of signposts for the walkways now.

This was all caused because the blogger thought he knew better than he did.