T8191

One of our rare ventures into the skies yesterday ...

JER ... impeccable as described in Post #55. Segregated at Gate 10 into ‘them’ and ‘us’, and released in the correct order. In 1D/F, we were the first on board after a polite gentleman unusually let my lady precede him!

LGW ... Gate 21, and pointless as usual. Document checks on entry to holding room, with a Priority line, but then ... nothing. No signs, Tensa barriers or staff, so a 777-load of pax just sat randomly and waited for boarding. Being familiar with LGW l/h, we took seats right by the doors to the airbridge, and when boarding commenced we (as Group 1) just dived down the airbridge and were first on board again.

EasternTraveler

In Itally.....scrum?

EasternTraveler

Someone made up their own definition of "cretinism"

corporate-wage-slave

I've seen people turn up and stand in the queue or hover nearby for a full hour before departure. That would not be typical, but 20 - 30 minutes would be fairly common. It takes about 10 seconds per row to decant. So even if your bag was 4 rows behind and no-one was prepared to hand it over to you (mostly they do, so they can get to their own bag), it doesn't seem logical to wait 20 minutes plus to secure a 1 minute advantage on arrival. Moreover it would speed things up if people used a locker on the other side to where they were sat, maybe the row behind too - look at how people get out of their seats and into the aisle - the body position is better set for going slightly backwards and over the aisle.

So I just don't buy it, it's all about the comfort factor of being in a queue and complaining about people getting it wrong.

And talking of people complaining about certain cultures not queuing and forming a scrum around the gate - that is actually the fastest way to get an aircraft boarded.

Jambon87

EasternTraveler

Standing in a queue for more than 5 minutes makes me think of certain amusement parks.

EasternTraveler

A little off topic, but I wish I had put this in my comments on the BA survey last week.

MarkedMan

We're trained at a very young age, in small bars at 8am, full of people needing sugar; we need to learn how to get our cappuccino. No queuing, no ticketing, just get to the front and get your order in. The barmen, who work these shifts over decades, will always find you after that, but you need to hit the front first. It's not a scrum, you're right. Scrumming has rules, this is every one for themselves territory.

orbitmic

But if we take subject2load's point at face value, that wouldn't be 1 minute even taking the 10 seconds mark (for what it's worth, the few times I counted I was on around 15 seconds so very close to your own calculations indeed and much less than what most people suspect!) Indeed, his point about no one allowing you to turn back means that unless you are willing to aggressively fight your way against the flow, to go back 4 rows to pick your bag is the not the equivalent of you sitting 4 rows behind but more like 10, 15, or 20. His suggestion is that as you are trying to initially go against the stream, you may well have to wait till about 10 or 15 rows behind you have disembarked so that some "slow movers" behind block the way and help you to retrace your steps, possibly one row at a time, before then waiting for the equivalent of a few more rows to go before you before you move forward again - so let's say 3-5 minutes delay overall.

Now in some cases, it could actually make a lot of sense to queue for 10 minutes before your flight takes off - at a time when you are already at the airport anyway and therefore your time is proportionally cheap - to save 3 minutes upon disembarking, at a time you may well be catching a train to your next meeting, and in a place where 20 more people in front of you at passport control at a small airport may well cost you a lot more than the "original" 3-5 minutes anyway.

On a separate note - and along the lines of what T8191 refers to and others before, if we focus on the boarding experience again (and reiterating once more that to me, the blockade is even more of a problem at check in than at boarding despite 95% of the thread reacting to the boarding part alone), my favourite solution is indeed the "separate pen" with chairs etc at the gate. Another airline doing this excellently is OS at VIE. There is usually a cordoned off part in the front part of the gates (complete with chairs etc) which you can only access if you have shown a J/C BP or a HON or SEN or *G card. I think that this works really well because the gate area then serves as a mini lounge without food/drink and it can be an incentive to go there early which, in turn, speeds up the boarding process (and indeed, in my experience, OS tends to have one of the fastest boardings in Europe). BKK also does the same cordoning off at many gates, and QR does the same at some of their outstations.

krispy84

T8191

hahaha ... not on this occasion! JER was the usual collection of suits on the red-eye (0705) and LGW did not present a single child or wheelchair on the UVF flight. At least, we never saw one.

The stupidity of those big LGW gates is that the Agents stay at their desks at the entrance to the gate ... no attempt to police the door to the airbridge, just reliance on pax obeying their broadcast instructions. IME that applies to both l/h and s/h.

NickB

Indeed. Comparing time spent waiting in a pre-boarding queue and time spent at disembarkation is comparing apples and oranges. If you spend half an hour in a pre-boarding queue, it does not mean that you have left home 1/2 hour earlier to queue. People queuing are people who would be at the gate anyway. from their perspective, time spent sitting down by the gate or standing in a queue is the same: it is dead, wasted time in any event. By contrast, time gained disembarking is genuinely time gained in the expectation of making it quicker to their desination. It may be beating a long queue at immigration, like you mention. it may be the 4 minutes that enable you to take an earlier train rather that having to wait 1/2 hour for the next one, etc...

ahmetdouas

LCY8737

KeaneJohn