KARFA

This one BA only selling full fare Y seats ex LHR to Europe until Easter ?

Stormbel

This evening there was mild panic when the evening flight to BHD came up as 'boarding' from T5B. Not 'go to gate'. It was announced 45 minutes before the due departure time. I left Galleries South with reasonable haste and joined people running to the shuttle (I wasn't quite in that mode) and arrived at the gate to see that the staff weren't even prepared for boarding. Announced as full flight. When we boarded about 45 minutes late I asked the crew what the delay was. Apparently they were awaiting the cleaners! They didn't seem well pleased. The captain announced that it was staff shortages.

matinicus rock

OMG this has got to be one of the more time-saving suggestions I’ve seen in a while - thank you CWS! Where are the kiosks though - any kiosk along any of the zones? Thanks!!

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, any kiosk which are available from one end of T5 to the other and they are rarely too busy. So long as the passport number matches what is in the booking, swiping the passport should both locate the booking and do the pre-boarding scan in one action.

EvilDoctorK

Flying out on Qatar tomorrow afternoon and the text message says arrive 4 hours before departure .. clearly I won't be doing that, but asking people to turn up that early must surely get a bit counter productive .. Please turn up early for your flight [ to spend more time at the airport] because the airport is busy etc. etc. is really a self fulfilling prophecy

[ In these cases invariably I find that turning up at a normal time works just fine because all the people who turned up at T-4hours stand around and queue for ~2 hours and then by the time I'd turn up with 90ish minutes to go there's nobody much around - obviously I won't be cutting it too fine in the current circumstances but I still plan to be sitting at home 4 hours before departure! ]

BOH

But when you turn up at say T-2 hours for your flight, won't you then join queues of people who followed the advice and have turned up 4 hours early for their flights departing 2 hours after yours?

The _Banking_Scot

hi

I think qatar is a bit different as there were reports in the past about check in taking 2hrs even for j pax as check in were verifying all the covid and travel docs. Now I have not seem reports of these sort of queues for a little while now that the travel restrictions are being lifted but perhaps something too keep in mind.

Enjoy your flight

Regards

Tbs

EvilDoctorK

Yes, though I'm on the 1600 flight and there isn't another Qatar flight until after 9pm ( and there's an A380 going out an hour before mine which is another reason not to turn up too early )

EvilDoctorK

Yes ( and I'm in business) however I think that's hopefully more a thing of the past with generally easing restrictions .. Let's see .. I'll probably turn up about 2 hours before, definitely not 4 .. All docs are in order so hopefully we'll be quick at least !

RG1X

I might try this. I've used those self drop machines a couple of times, but then stopped for some reason. Not really sure why.

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, hence the counter-productiveness of it all. Airlines close down check in at a certain point, it's more likely to be 40 minutes to departure rather than 70 minutes to departure. If you are in a queue at 90 minutes to departure they are not going to leave without you. Qatar passengers do enjoy a fairly over-wrought check-in and gate experience, thanks to the high staffing numbers they traditionally have. I often see this in OSL when they are fairly keen to get people into the gate queue rather than sitting down waiting for said queue to shorten a bit - presumably so gate staff can visualise how much work they have left. Whereas in EDI I've never seen them try this. When I asked one the agents in EDI about this they said they only did this queue management when some bigwig from Doha shows up.

EvilDoctorK

I know they used to have an awful lot of staff at T4 .. never tried in T5 .. I'll post my observations here anyway in case it's of interest to anyone .. I'm sure if we turn up at 2ish with all our docs in order we'll have no problem getting on the 1600 flight - I already have boarding cards so if HBO ( not happening this trip!) could go straight to the gate I think

econ

Are there any kiosks available in T5 that are a bit off to the side?

My recent pass through T5 the kiosks were indeed not fully occupied, but were surrounded by the hordes in queues.

EvilDoctorK

FWIW ...I turned up at Qatar check-in at just after 1400 ( for the 1600 departure ) .. Zero queue for Business check-in and maybe 20 people in the economy queue ... If you took into account the crew checking in as well I think there were probably twice as many staff as passengers at the check-in area ... Consistent with previous in T4 they have very high staffing levels it seems
Fast track security took no time .. Let's see if the flights on time but zero issues so far .. overall mid afternoon T5 looked quiet landside and a bit busier though not terribly so airside

tmm1012

Things seem to be getting much better. I was in T5 today around 1300 for a 1505 departure to ZRH. Walking the length of T5 (from the Sofitel to the First Wing), it was busy, but I didn't see any queues that looked excessive. First Wing check in was a breeze (was directed to a check in desk immediately upon entering). Annoyingly, our flight's gate wasn't posted until 1430 and was from the B gates, which is a pain to hustle 3 small children to the gate at the last minute, but otherwise everything went fairly smoothly.