The EZY check-in desks at LTN tend to have massive queues. One tends to forget this when one is used to checking in at Club desks

Conformance hides the delay. With a 50 minute conformance, everyone on the plane now has to turn up 20-30 minutes before they would have done (to keep the same safety arround delays. If you plan to have 90 minutes of safety to get through security because of traffic, you now need to plan arrive 90 minutes before T-50 rather than 90 minutes before T-30).

If LHR was increased to 50 minutes, people would need to leave 15 minutes earlier than they would, effectively it's as if the plane takes off 15 minutes late.

This of course means LTN (and LHR) earns more money from selling coffees and duty free while people are stuck airside.

Err, even been to EDI on a full fare ticket as a BA Gold?

You'll be in the main queue, while the EZY speedyboarders whizz past.

I guess these things matter a lot to many people. Ten minutes here or there can be a massive inconvenience.

I'm on the red-eye out of JER on Thursday, ETD 0700. Taxi is booked for 0530, should be there by 0550 ... drop a bag and grab a last cigarette [for some 15 hours]. Security around 0600, Galleries' coffee and .... breathe.

I'm enormously grateful my life doesn't depend on "10 minute windows", and I do genuinely have sympathy for those whose lives seem to be driven that way.

Depend on it? Not really. That's the way I roll? Yes.

Removal of subjective discretionary decision-making from front-line staff seems to be driven, at least in part, by the rampant inability of people to accept a negative decision when discretion is not exercised in their favour. For some reason, everyone thinks that their own needs are so important that they should have the benefit of a favourable decision - so, rapid end of discretionary policy.Again, driven by the same modern self-centred approach to life. "I don't care if the other 299 people on the aircraft have benefited from there being no delay because of the conformance system, I've been grievously wronged because I was only 2 minutes late at the conformance point. So I'm going to start a class action, and I'll never fly BA again."

@ Globaliser... I think the words you are looking for include 'selfish'

Curiously, I have never ever had any problem with flying with any airline. I comply with the T&Cs, and it has been a painless experience for many, many, years.

It also seems to be that whenever "discretion" is referred to on the fora, it isn't discretion to do something in an exceptional case, it is an expectation that it be done; seems that too many people , rather than be happy if it was granted then turn that into expectation and then complain when not granted it

A consistent application manages expectations a lot better

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I haven't seen any evidence that on-time performance has improved materially as a direct result of conformance being implemented. I understand average on-time performance has improved since the move to T5, but that could be for any number of reasons. For instance BMI, operating in a non-conformance terminal, had better on-time performance than BA per the 2010 data. Are their customers who clear security at less than 35 minutes "selfish"? Or should we slavishly and unquestionably accept every rule companies put in place as they always know better?

If I live 30 minutes from LTN start of security, from there I know it takes 10 minutes to get to the gate, and I need to be at the gate at T-20, I leave home at T-60.

Because of potential delays in traffic, late taxi etc, I leave 60 minutes of padding, at T-120.

Now, thanks to this new move (is it just Easyjet, or all LTN flights?) I need to be at the start of security by T-55, but with no change in the padding needed for traffic, I now have to leave home at T-145, 25 minutes earlier than before. My journey now takes 25 minutes longer. For a day trip (assuming conformance catches on at the other end), that's an extra hour a day away from my family.

If you're at the gate at the time it states on your boarding card, you get on the plane. If you're still in security (having spent 30 minutes there), you get offloaded. I don't see how conformance makes a difference to this

It means that they have more time to offload the luggage and also that the person is still landside where ticket desks are; yes, some may reach the conformance point in time, but still fail to reach the aeroplane in time, but they would be a smaller number and less that then need to make way back landside

Conformance being one of them.

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So you've said.

Yet other airlines at Heathrow have better on-time performance and don't have conformance. As I said.

And?

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....if you can't demonstrate that conformance is necessary to materially improve on-time performance then it's simply an anti-customer measure.