Scheduled flight departure and arrival times

[infoworks]

I speak at a lot of conferences, and I have noticed a trend now to instal "check in" gates to the room, especially where conference attendance provides CPD points or similar, and leaving before 20 minutes or so are up means no points, but there is sometimes a mini exodus mid-way through (I am always amazed it's not a regular stampede).

 

[Damien]

I speak at a lot of conferences, and I have noticed a trend now to instal "check in" gates to the room, especially where conference attendance provides CPD points or similar, and leaving before 20 minutes or so are up means no points, but there is sometimes a mini exodus mid-way through (I am always amazed it's not a regular stampede).

Are you sure it's not you? :roll:

 

[oz_mark]

I speak at a lot of conferences, and I have noticed a trend now to instal "check in" gates to the room, especially where conference attendance provides CPD points or similar, and leaving before 20 minutes or so are up means no points, but there is sometimes a mini exodus mid-way through (I am always amazed it's not a regular stampede).

IBM often make you hand in the evaluation form before giving you your free gifts/showbags.

 

[Damien]

IBM often make you hand in the evaluation form before giving you your free gifts/showbags.

So do Oracle at the one day events - at least at the ones that I've been to.

Multi-day conferences are the best ones. You normally get the goodies at registration because the bag contains the agenda.

 

[infoworks]

It's like having the feast AFTER the wedding ceremony

 

[JohnK]

So it can happen even when you allow plenty of time for the connection. I now make it habit to get at least 1 flight earlier than needed for my connections. I would rather be relaxing in the lounge awaiting a delayed departure than be stressed and rushed during the connection.

The ones I hate are when the passengers are somewhere in the terminal and have been sidetracked at the duty-free shops or the bar and are late getting to the gate.

Agree with you and I do truly feel sorry for people that miss connections because of delays in connecting flights. Normally ground crew know if they are waiting on transit passenger(s) and do everything in their power to help if they know a connecting flight is running late.

I hate hearing a person(s) name called over and over on the airport PA and you finally see them running toward their gate. These people are just so selfish they deserve to miss their flight. Once you have checked-in it is not too hard to be at the boarding gate well ahead of scheduled boarding.

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

I hate hearing a person(s) name called over and over on the airport PA and you finally see them running toward their gate. These people are just so selfish they deserve to miss their flight. Once you have checked-in it is not too hard to be at the boarding gate well ahead of scheduled boarding.

Sometimes it is not said pax fault. Eg could have been a late arrival on connecting flight, or as has happened to me on more than one occasion they decide to board early but forget to notify the QP so no early boarding call announced in the lounge and when lounge boarding call made they are already paging in the terminal.

 

[Mal]

Sometimes it is not said pax fault. Eg could have been a late arrival on connecting flight, or as has happened to me on more than one occasion they decide to board early but forget to notify the QP so no early boarding call announced in the lounge and when lounge boarding call made they are already paging in the terminal.

That has happened to me too. No notification in the QP [International during a quiet spot in the morning], then the "blast" from the QP staff to come and see them. "Your plane is just about to be closed". At least I wasn't the last one on the plane though!

Ditto with the connecting flights issue. Not all delayed pax are too busy eating/drinking at the bar, or shopping for presents for their partner

 

[DeathSquid]

Don't blame the passenger

I hate hearing a person(s) name called over and over on the airport PA and you finally see them running toward their gate. These people are just so selfish they deserve to miss their flight. Once you have checked-in it is not too hard to be at the boarding gate well ahead of scheduled boarding.

I used to wonder about these people too (and glare at them as they boarded the plane after holding up everyone else). How hard can it be getting to the gate on time?

And then it happened to me. Qantas were very late inbound to Sydney. They stuffed around getting me from one terminal to another on the internal Qantas shuttle. Then they told me to run from one end of the terminal to the other. As I was running I could hear them paging my name from my destination gate, and when I boarded the plane, everyone was glaring daggers at me.

So, during the flight I asked the person next to me what they had been told. Apparently, they had been informed that the flight was delayed because *I* had failed to show up on time! Depsite the fact that Qantas had known for more than 16 hours that the previous connecting flight was late. This can only be described as incompetence. Since then, I have looked on passengers arriving breathless for a flight with somewhat different eyes.

So why couldn't Qantas say, "sorry we are late; it's our fault; we appreciate your patience", rather than blaming a customer? Who knows? Maybe it's the same reason they blame late departures on the "late arrival of the operating aircraft". That one always gives me a chuckle... we are late because we were late (and, notice, never a sorry to be heard).

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

Late arrival of aircraft is sometimes a made up excuse. There's been many times I've heard that and seen with my own eyes its a load of <bleep>.

 

[JohnK]

Sometimes it is not said pax fault. Eg could have been a late arrival on connecting flight, or as has happened to me on more than one occasion they decide to board early but forget to notify the QP so no early boarding call announced in the lounge and when lounge boarding call made they are already paging in the terminal.

That has happened to me too. No notification in the QP [International during a quiet spot in the morning], then the "blast" from the QP staff to come and see them. "Your plane is just about to be closed". At least I wasn't the last one on the plane though!

If this is a perk of being in QC then fine. But surely it is the responsibility of the passenger to be at the gate on time rather than expecting QC staff to advise them it is time to go.

As for people with connecting flights they have all the sympathy I can give them if they are running late for flights. I am not blaming them. I get to gate early and I am one of the last ones on the plane most of the time and you can see people, couples, families running towards gate with shopping in hand. These were not connecting passengers, just very inconsiderate passengers.

This thread was originally about late departures and arrivals and me wanting to know what was causing them? I had 11 flights in 12 days and I haven't done the final analysis yet but I think over 50% were late. On Saturday morning the 6:30am MEL-SYD flight pushed back at 7:05am and took off at 7:15am. I boarded at 6:10am as I was tired from previous SIN-MEL flight and if I remember correctly late departure had something to do with the vehicle carrying the luggage breaking down or something. So it takes an extra 35 minutes to get luggage on board? Something is just not quite right as they seem to have a new excuse for every late departure. It reminds me of my school days when I used to get to class late as I had to find a new excuse every time.

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

Sometimes it is not said pax fault. Eg could have been a late arrival on connecting flight, or as has happened to me on more than one occasion they decide to board early but forget to notify the QP so no early boarding call announced in the lounge and when lounge boarding call made they are already paging in the terminal.

That has happened to me too. No notification in the QP [International during a quiet spot in the morning], then the "blast" from the QP staff to come and see them. "Your plane is just about to be closed". At least I wasn't the last one on the plane though!

If this is a perk of being in QC then fine. But surely it is the responsibility of the passenger to be at the gate on time rather than expecting QC staff to advise them it is time to go.

I was at the gate by the time I had been advised boarding was due. They actually did the boarding early (but without informing QP).

In other examples (non-QF) I've had cases where gate and lounge staff saying different things about state of boarding - lounge saying don't bother going to gate as it is going to be late while outside the lounge they're paging pax holding up flight.

Indeed a very recent case went the other way. In SFO the computer screen was showing boarding as normal on time - so I headed to the gate only to be told the a/c hadn't even left its previous airport yet and so things will be late. Since I would misconnect my next flight I headed back to lounge to try to change flight. Both lounge staff and the operations staff they spoke with where unaware of the status. It was only after I'd gone back to the gate and gotten them to advise lounge staff, that I was able to get changed to a more suitable flight.

So I don't think it is clear cut. Yes there are times when pax are inconsiderate. But there are also times when it is not their fault.