northeastflyer

Hi. In terms of within the flight status function on the BA app, is actual flight arrival time at LHR when the aircraft reaches the gate, lands, disembarks etc? Usually I'm not bothered about timing but on this occasion have a car and driver waiting. Thanks.
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Oaxaca

On the BA app, it is time on stand. That could of course be a remote stand.

northeastflyer

Thanks. So on stand and doors open or not?

corporate-wage-slave

On stand is always a minute or two before doors open (hopefully!!!!) so for airbridge arrivals you can usually add about 2 or 3 minutes before the first passenger can leave. For remote stands then there is a task to wheel the steps up to the aircraft, secure the areas and get the bus(es) lined up. That can be quite quick too, and you can save a minute or two in that the stands are often quicker to reach from the runways, but if the bus is missing you are in the "how long is a piece of string" territory. On airbridges, if there isn't a ground handler available then that can also add a delay to doors open. But 3 minutes would be a fair average in my experience.

mikeyfly

Arriving domestic or international? What time of day? T5 or T3? This will impact time from disembarking to getting to driver

northeastflyer

Thanks. All is clear.

flatlander

I agree with timings as described above, but they will be far outweighed by time spent walking from distant gates or bussing from remote stands and may be affected by immigration queues (unless this is a domestic/CTA arrival), so you cannot accurately predict when you will emerge into the public arrivals area.

mctaste

the driver will wait for you. no need to plan down to the nanosecond.

onobond

What annoys me, occasionally, is the message from the Flight Deck in preparations for landing, when it's stated that "due to xxx (tailwind, ATC raffle win or something else) we'll be landing at nn.nn , which is 8 minutes before schedule". That cheerful message is treasured by all having tight schedules, but is then often followed by a very long taxi, with occasional jams, and finally the plane is met by an unmanned gate, or other similar obstacle, Disembarking may be starting 25-20 min post ETA

Globaliser

This always annoys me, too. I spend a lot of my time trying to educate friends that the scheduled time of departure is the scheduled time for pushback, not the scheduled time for takeoff; and similarly, the scheduled time for arrival is the scheduled time for parking at the gate, not the scheduled time for landing. Telling passengers that landing will take place 8 minutes before the scheduled time for parking at the gate is simply misleading (even if the statement is not literally inaccurate).

flatlander

I completely agree that an early landing (wheels down) announcement is of no use to passengers at all.

I recently had an announcement from the flight deck that we had arrived at the gate 10 minutes early, and that was useful. I did leave the aircraft several minutes before the scheduled arrival time.

Mind you, while we arrived early on another recent occasion the airbridge operator appeared to have trouble parking the thing - the senior cabin crew member opened the door, exchange a few sharp words with the airbridge operator and promptly closed the door again. There was a large gap between the bridge deck and the side of the aircraft. After 5-10 minutes of repositioning the airbridge the cabin door was reopened, and our early arrival time had become on-time. There was no chirpy early arrival announcement from the cockpit on that occasion.