LondonAussie

I've had a few flights recently where a delayed departure of 30-60 minutes has been published prior to boarding, but boarding still went ahead around the scheduled time. Annoying for those of us with lounge access, it's far more comfortable to wait in the lounge than on the plane. One captain apologised and said he would leave the seatbelt sign off in case anyone wanted to walk around the cabin and stretch their legs while we wait.

KARFA

If it has an on time departure but delayed arrival then that is indicative of a slot delay. In those cases they will board on time and send a ready message as the slot can and does often move in.

corporate-wage-slave

That's quite a specific scenario when there are slot restrictions, which can be brought forward if the captain indicates to ATC that they are ready to depart. It doesn't always work but I'm sure we can all recall situations where a long delay was moderated by a "good news" annoucement from the flight deck. If everyone was in the lounge / gate area, then that delay will definitely happen and could extend.

NickB

IME, that is not new. If the delay is ATC-related and unless there is no chance of it reducing, it has always been the case IME that they will often board the plane anyway in the hope of the delay clearing and being able to depart earlier.

SpeedbirdLHR

This is not poor training, just laziness on part of staff. The system is easy to operate and is clear what needs to be done. It’s communicated and used to be on regular basis about need to accurately publish gate status and not go from gate open to final call. Agents have constantly been told they should not be putting final call up as soon as boarding starts but many still do.

Similar issues arise with the announcements system, where agents just push all the groups/messages one after the other and don’t allow time between.

As with most things, any system/process is only as the user. The only other solution is to have an automated system, but again this would need human intervention when things aren’t on schedule.

SpeedbirdLHR

Duplicate

Deckard

My worst with this, is being in the Flounge and waiting on a status update for what I suspected would be a B gate. The flight went from no status to “Boarding B gates”. Panic ensued.

Duck1981

I normally tend to leave the B Gates lounge once the board switches to 'Final Call' for a B/C departure and well after the status went into 'Now Boarding' when in the F Lounge.

A few times, especially when the flight departed at C gates, I was welcomed by gate staff standing well ahead of the tensa barrier looking out for pax and I heard a few times 'boarding completed' after I came on board. So it's not for the faint hearted, and I am doing this only when without friends/ family. Often though 'final call' is announced when half of pax are still in the terminal.

HarryHolden68

Or perhaps another manifestation of the symptoms of the COVID cull of long serving, experienced staff who were proud to work for BA. Today, we find many new staff who don’t care about BA. Staff who are poorly motivated. Staff who are poorly supervised. Staff who see themselves in a job, not a career. And staff who reciprocate the lack of empathy they receive from BA.

The net result is staff taking short cuts, making arbitrary decisions (GGL access into CCR anyone) and a dumbing down of the treatment of passengers. And BA have lost the layer of middle management who policed and rewarded their staff performance. So why should the staff care about doing the right job when they can just easily get away with doing the easy job.

Willy and Alex chased short term share price growth when the purge took place. This decision is their legacy and BA will never return to the days where staff would lie in front of a bus for them. Long term, a once proud aspirational airline is becoming another turd in the bucket of turds.

lost_in_translation

Yep, this. 13 rows of CE on my AY operated flight to FAO yesterday and incredibly impressive, just as BA used to be / the old crews still are - drinks service done before meal with two trolleys starting at the front and back of CE, everyone had their meal within 35-40 minutes of takeoff, a crew member regularly walking up and down the aisle with a bottle of champagne. I’ve watched new BA crew struggle to serve meals to 6 rows of CE to MUC this year in time (lol) and last week I had a crew member (British national, to be clear) where I had to explain what slimline tonic was…

I still think BA is better than IB, though.

CKBA

I've been caught out waiting in the Flounge for the 'flight boarding' to come on the screen, only for it to go straight from 'Gate Bxx' to 'Closing' - mad dash via walkway to be last boarding. Conversely, many times it has 'Boarding', leave Flounge, walk to B - or even C gates, and still have to wait another 30 minutes.

Can I help you

Personally I would never be at the gate no later than 30 minutes before departure for any reason.

corporate-wage-slave

I would say this is avoidable. Assume that your flight is going to depart on time, or will at least close up at a time close to schedule - that is the overwhelming majority of services. BA.com/status would tell you if there was something wildly off this.

Every single gate in T5 is within 15 minutes walk from the South Lounge complex, all of them . Clearly there are gates much nearer than that, and B or C gates are announced at 70 to 75 minutes to departure or sooner (you may need to hang on for the Idaho displays to loop round for this information). So if you're in the B lounge you're probably down to 10 minutes walk from all T5 gates. Transits inject some uncertainty since there are occasionally mysterious pauses in the service frequency.

So if you simply walk to your gate from the South Lounges at 40 minutes to departure, you won't miss your flight, assuming normal mobility and not getting confused with gate numbers. If you know it's going to be an A gate you can probably allow yourself 10 extra minutes.

orbitmic

The answer is as provided by others, not late arrival of plane as in your example above but ATC restrictions which have sadly been plentiful this summer. The gate staff obviously only leave after they have closed boarding.

NickB

OK but in that case I do not quite understand the reference to current staffing problems as the issue is rather different.