Your flight is now ready for boarding

I’ve come to the conclusion, after all these years on the road, that there is absolutely no quick and efficient way to board a plane.  If the airlines could only discover that miracle cure, then I’m convinced that the majority of travel delays would disappear overnight!

                                                                      *          *          *

I’m sure you’ve all seen – and been in – the melee that sometimes goes on at the gate.  I can remember a time travelling from Luton back to Warsaw on a (now defunct) Eastern European budget carrier. There were no allocated seats, so it was first come first served for the windows and front seats.  I rolled up at the gate a good half hour before boarding as there was bugger all to do at the airport after the tour of the Duty Free shops, and found the area already crowded with maybe 150 people, most of them Poles returning home. The flight was signaled on the screen as “Delayed” – no estimated time – but a good portion of the passengers were already standing in a straggly and typically disorganized line at the gate…..even though there was no sign of the plane or any airline gate staff.  I sat down (there were plenty of available seats) and started reading my book.

About 10 minutes later, a couple of girls came along and took their places to board us, so immediately half of the remaining passengers jumped up and joined the throng.  Still no sign of a plane, mind…..  Then it arrived, swung off the taxi way and pulled up outside the gate.  Now at that time at Luton there were no air-bridges connecting the plane to the terminal – it was down the steps and walk across the tarmac to the door.   Which of course meant that arriving passengers and those replacing them on the aircraft were using the same relatively narrow pathway in and out of the building.  What could possibly go wrong?  Common sense says that until all the passengers are off the plane, those departing are not going to be allowed out so you sit and wait patiently for the call, right?

Wrong.  As soon as the plane arrived, before it had even stopped rolling, never mind unloading, all the rest of the passengers leapt to their feet and started pushing and shoving to be first through the gate.  Bedlam…..and the two poor gate agents were trying desperately to stop them and get them to move back to allow a plane-full of passengers into the building.  It was all very fraught – eventually security had to step in to force a path through the mob for the arriving passengers, who were clearly mystified and not a little pissed off by what was going on (it was raining, I remember, and because of the intransigence of the fools at the gate they were having to wait outside getting soaked until the security guys did their work).   Eventually, we were allowed through, and the gate agents just stood back and let everyone go in a mad rush of jostling and cursing people, with no attempt at organization.  I don’t blame them – they were absolutely helpless.

To this day I have no idea why the passengers were behaving like that.  It defied belief and all common sense, and only caused a longer delay than would otherwise have happened.  It was the same on the plane, when I boarded, quicker than expected as I was pushed along in the middle of the mob – people were arguing over who had been first to that seat or the other, no-one was prepared to compromise and take a middle seat in order to get the plane moving, and an increasingly harassed aircrew was desperately trying to bring some semblance of order to it all.  I eased my way through, ducking under the waving arms of people angrily gesticulating, and slid quietly into a window seat at an over-wing exit row while two guys argued over who was going to take it, then feigned linguistic ignorance when they started bawling at me, their quarrel forgotten.  I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.

As an object lesson in how not to board a plane, it surely could not be better!

                                                                      *          *          *

There are other times when things get a little silly too, mainly surrounding our good old Frequent Travellers and Business Class passengers…..of whom, of course, I am one.  Now what typically happens is the boarding announcement calls for passengers to board, and then adds a little rider: “Business Class passengers and Travel Scheme Gold Card holders may board at their convenience”.   So everyone is happily and steadily moving through the boarding process, handing passport and boarding card to the gate agent to scan them through, when some chinless wonder, usually carrying a laptop and pulling a wheely suitcase, barges through: “Business Class!  Gold Card!”, and demanding immediate attention.  He’s usually accompanied by work colleagues (not unusually one of whom is some bimbo he’s trying to impress), all similarly laden.  Woe betide the gate agent who denies immediate access to these fools!

The other stunt pulled by these travellers – and I confess to pulling it myself – is to arrive at the gate shortly before boarding, and rather than take a seat stand right by the barrier to be first through onto the plane.  People may have been waiting patiently on the seats for quite a while, but they’re only Economy Class, goes the thought process, so they’re not really important.  Of course, as soon as the gate agent starts making the announcement, these guys are right there, passports and boarding cards in hand, ready to move.  The concept of The Queue is unknown. 

The reason I try to insinuate myself into this little bunch is not because I fly Business Class (those days are long gone in my company) or because I consider myself above other Economy Class passengers courtesy of my Frequent Flyer Silver Card (I don’t), but because quite often they do not actually have Business Class seats or even seats towards the front of the plane.  What they are actually doing is stuffing their baggage into the storage bins at the front, and then taking their seats further back.  All this does of course is take up all the storage space for other passengers who may possibly board a little later with legitimate front-of-cabin seats – and of course more chaos ensues as passengers and cabin crew try to re-arrange bags to fit their own in.  There is a simple solution to this of course: no baggage larger than a laptop case should be allowed inside the cabin.  A few airlines try to do this, especially on full flights in smaller aircraft, and it invariably causes yet more argument at both gate and aircraft.

LOT, my local airline, do this often.  At check in they assess your carry-on luggage, and if they are aware that it will cause storage problems in the cabin (which of course they can tell as they know the exact plane you’re flying on and what its cabin storage capacity is) then you are given a label “Delivery At Aircraft” on your unacceptable bag, and have to hand it in to the handlers when you board the plane.  It works pretty well, at least at boarding, but can cause some anger because of course at most airports the bags then join the rest of the luggage in the black hole that is the baggage hall, rather than be loaded onto trucks for collection when you leave the plane.  No quick getaways for our friendly neighbourhood businessmen here!

                                                                    *          *          *

Passengers with kids also cause problems – and don’t think for one minute I advocate a blanket ban on kids travelling: nothing of the sort.  My two love an airline journey, planes excite them tremendously – my son was complaining last week that he hasn’t been on an aeroplane this year.   No, the issue is again one of boarding efficiently. The best idea is to prioritize families to get them settled in their seats and all their (copious) baggage stored away before letting anyone else through – all very pragmatic and sensible.

When you’re travelling with kids, especially small ones, you are invariably and unavoidably laden with stuff that is essential for the trip.  As well as your own baggage you have a push chair, usually with a sleeping infant in it.  You have another bag with bottles, food, wipes, nappies, and at least one change of clothes for each child.  Probably another with books and toys for the journey.  If the kids are a little older then a small portable DVD player and some movies for them to watch.  It all mounts up and the younger the child the more you are carrying.  Most airlines, at boarding, call for passengers travelling with infants to come through first.  It usually happens that this call comes through while you’re taking one of them to the toilet or changing a nappy or something.  So you scramble to finish what you’re doing and rush through, to avoid delaying everyone else.  And run the gauntlet of disapproving glances and tut-tutting from the other passengers (especially You Know Who!).  The alternative is to finish what you’re doing in your own time, then move through and hope that people are prepared to back off and let you through first – inevitably some are more reluctant to do this than others.

You get to the plane.  The baggage handler takes the push chair from you, and you hope to see it again in one piece when you land.  So lugging multiple bags over one arm and maybe a child in the other, you walk through the door.  An officious stewardess asks to see your boarding cards (with luck you’re clutching them in your teeth), and points you in the right direction (basically turn right and walk down the aisle until your row, then sit).  Now everything is fine if you were properly prioritized: the cabin is empty, you get to your seats, a stewardess helps you with your bags and the kids and you can relax.  But if you’re late – well, the fun starts.  Up to the door it’s the same.  Through the door, it’s the same.  Then you turn right, and you’re faced with an already crowded aisle. You try to move forward, and your kids, excited, are probably trying to squeeze through ahead of you – doesn’t go down too well.  People already sitting in aisle seats are in danger of getting a whack round the head from one of your bags.  People struggling to stow their own baggage are less than impressed when you ask them if they would mind moving their wheely bag a little to give you enough room to squeeze in a Tesco carrier bag full of teddy bears and Ladybird books and coloured pencils.  You get to your row and find someone already in your aisle seat (because typically dad sits in one row with a child and mum sits in the next with the other), and they have spread their own handbag, jackets and stuff over the middle seat next to them – and seem a tad upset when you ask them to move so you and your little one can get to your seats.  It’s great.

And can take forever.

                                                                     *          *          *

A lot of airlines these days try to board you by row number, starting from the back of the plane.   So instead of (or sometimes as well as) prioritizing families the announcement tells people in rows 35 to 18 to board first and everyone else to sit down and wait patiently.  Yeah, right.  Oh, and of course, “Business Class passengers and holders of Gold Cards may board at their leisure”.   Actually, if everyone did as requested it may actually work – a recent piece on the Yahoo News site showed an exercise an American airline had done where they tried various ways of boarding a bog-standard workhorse Boeing 737 to see which method was quickest and most efficient.  It turned out that boarding by rows, and further by window seats first, then middle, then aisle, was by far and away quickest – by several minutes in fact.  But it was a bit of a loaded test since all the people playing passenger were airline employees and of course did exactly as they were told.  There were no visible pretend families laden with kids, no-one pretending to be a hyper important Business Class passenger demanding immediate access, and not too many wheely bags to clutter the place up.  All in all, it was not really what I would term “real life.”

Most times, when the announcement about boarding by rows is made (and it is happening increasingly) the majority of people ignore it and just go to board anyway.  I’ve done it myself to make sure I had storage space on a little Embraer 140 (a very comfortable plane, actually, but a little light in rack space), on an Embraer 175 (bigger and more comfortable and spacious) and various Airbus short- and medium-haul planes.  Never once have I been turned back by the gate agent because I’m trying to board out of sequence…..which makes a bit of a mockery of introducing this process in the first place.  A little bit of polite enforcement may actually demonstrate the improved efficiency to such an extent that passengers will accept it as the norm, and we’ll all be happier for it.

Mind you, it really needs to be done sensibly.  Last Sunday evening I caught a night flight from Warsaw to Larnaca.  At boarding the message went something like: “We are boarding by rows.  Passengers in rows 30 to 15 should board first.  Other passengers please wait until you are called.  Tonight we will be taking you by bus to the plane.  Thank you.”

Wait a second!  We’re all going onto the same bus out to the plane, and you’re asking us to board by row numbers?  Do you really expect everyone to stand back and let people off the bus in the same order they got onto it? 

Of course, no-one took a blind bit of notice: we all piled through, in a very orderly fashion, got off the bus and onto the plane in an equally orderly fashion.  Not by row numbers.  And you know what?  It was completely painless.  No delay.  No squabbles.

Perfect.