Conformance [Easyjet at LTN]
 

From an e-mail I got yesterday, it looks like the "orange team" at Luton are running a trial with conformance a la BA, or at least something similar to it.

"Security

Security will close promptly 50 minutes before departure. If you present yourself to security after this time you will not be permitted through."

I'll have a nose how it works and how many people end up annoyed (as I'm flying with them tomorrow). My suspicion is that it's entering the queue that must be done 50 minutes beforehand (as the boarding card scanners are at the entrance to the queueing area at Luton) - is that the same at LHR T5 or do you have to have *cleared* security before the time BA specify (35 mins, was it?) which means you also have to predict security wait times or arrive really early?

Neil

The clock stops at the point at which the BAA staff at Terminal 5 scan your boarding card prior to entering the security queue.

So there will now be a 10 minute period in which you can drop bags or check-in but will not actually be able to board the flight?

No, the minimum check-in time at LTN (and only LTN, not for instance LGW) is currently one hour (opening 3 hours before). The website is not very good in pointing this out, but I've been getting e-mails about it reminding me a few days before each flight. This was the first one that mentioned conformance.

I have suspicions that the reason for this was that the new EZY "flexible fares" have an on-time guarantee, and that they didn't want to have to give away too many free flights. It seems to me that punctuality out of LTN has improved somewhat over the last few months, from pretty dire to actually pretty good.

(Excuse me posting it in here - but the budget travel forum isn't that busy and doesn't tend to result in much discussion, and I thought BA-related input into it would be interesting as it's the first time I've ever heard of it outside LHR T5).

Neil

Ah, OK. Sounds like the same deal, then. Just a longer time period.

EZY trying it is significant, and it clearly works for BA. I wonder will others follow?

Neil

Interesting. Not least because the scanners they use for online boarding passes at LTN seem to be of poor quality and I've frequently seen people sent back to check-in to get their BP reprinted because it wouldn't scan.

I can see more dramas at check in suitable for tv viewing.

I hope not! Conformance is ridiculous.

Thanks to the tube, I made the LHR 35 minute cut off with seconds to spare on Wednesday, however I was still in the lounge at about T-32. The gate shuts at T-10, I could still be in a taxi at T-15 at that time of night, and I'd be less likely to relax before boarding and forget what time it was.

Personally I like to give an hour of safety when arriving at most airports. That means setting out to arrive at T-95 at LHR, but now means T-110 at LTN. It would be T-80 without the dreaded "conformance".

How long before it's 90 minute "conformance" with easyjet, but for £5 you can pay to bring it down to 30 minutes?

I think that's one of Sir Humphrey's irregular verbs (or perhaps adjectives), isn't it?

Conformance is "ridiculous" to the person who's been caught out by it, perhaps through no fault of their own.

Conformance is not "ridiculous" to every person who's benefited from the improved punctuality that it's brought.

You can pay £3 to jump the security queue at LTN (same as you get for business class at "proper" airports). There's an argument that, because the security queue is shortened, the conformance there should indeed be shorter.

I didn't notice it causing issues this morning. That said, I was quite early due to being lucky with the car park bus.

Neil

Last time I flew EZY, I got to the security checkpoint at LGW about 15-20 minutes before take-off. No checked bags and the flight was late so we made it to our destination. ^

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Horses for courses. It's part of the fad that every decision in life needs to be in a formal transparent policy that is applied consistently and the removal of subjective decision making from front-line staff that is a necessary part of such an approach. Whilst average delays may well have reduced, as an individual an average delay is neither here nor there, if you're the one at the margin impacted by such a rule, that's what's important to you.

On a less philosophical perspective, thankfully LCY haven't hopped on this bandwagon, yet.

Indeed. Unsurprisingly the entrance to security is sheilded from the 'fast track', so you can pay £3, walk through to fast track only to realise the regular queue is very short.

Easyjet also offer fast-track at some airports to holders of 'speedy boarding' passes.

It would be quite absurd for LCY to implement a conformance rule, IMO.

50 mins conformance sounds ghastly, and it would seriously put me off flying ex-LTN.

Haven't been through LTN for a while, but when flying them ex-STN, I usually aim to arrive somewhere in the region of T-60 with bags, T-45 without, leaving a little room for error. It looks like this would add another 20-25 minutes of dead time. :td: