Queue chaos at Airports

[98elise]

Shnozz said:

Masiv said:

I flew from Manchester a few years ago and it was dreadful. Massive queues at security and was a total st show. I would rather pay 100 more for a flight from somewhere else.

Trouble is it seems this is a nation wide issue.

I don't think it is. I've flown twice from Stansted recently and not had any issues. At the same time Birmingham and Manchester have had huge queues.

[DeltonaS]

Ouroboros said:

Shnozz said:

but none have been the st show the UK has faced.

Dublin airport is struggling, massive queues.

And in Europe same issues, so i guess you are not looking hard enough.

https://simpleflying.com/frankfurt-staff-shortages...

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense...

Amsterdam has similar issues (also due to staff shortages).

Although I was there last friday and it wasn't that bad, a few queues but nothing outrageous.

[Shnozz]

Ouroboros said:

Shnozz said:

but none have been the st show the UK has faced.

Dublin airport is struggling, massive queues.

And in Europe same issues, so i guess you are not looking hard enough.

https://simpleflying.com/frankfurt-staff-shortages...

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense...

Seems you are right. To be fair, I did caveat my post with my limited experience in only 2 other countries but you clipped that part.

It might simply be the fact I am more exposed to UK press also, so coupled with personal experience it seems worse than other countries.

I was a regular through Dublin airport pre-Covid and the shift to Zoom meetings. I have had some pretty bad experiences in pre-Covid times so can only imagine its not rosy at the minute.

Either way, I do hope this gets resolved shortly. There are others that fly far more frequently than me but I am still in an airport 2 - 4 times a month and its far from a pleasant experience at the minute.

[Deep Thought]

Shnozz said:

Seems you are right. To be fair, I did caveat my post with my limited experience in only 2 other countries but you clipped that part.

It might simply be the fact I am more exposed to UK press also, so coupled with personal experience it seems worse than other countries.

I was a regular through Dublin airport pre-Covid and the shift to Zoom meetings. I have had some pretty bad experiences in pre-Covid times so can only imagine its not rosy at the minute.

Either way, I do hope this gets resolved shortly. There are others that fly far more frequently than me but I am still in an airport 2 - 4 times a month and its far from a pleasant experience at the minute.

I do hope the airports sort themselves out before the summer. I do fear it will be carnage though.

I'll be flying out of Belfast International which has struggled over the summer months pre covid.

Doesnt seem to be massive delays there yet, but the summer peak could be problematic.

[GT03ROB]

DaveGrohl said:

GT03ROB said:

Alorotom said:

So to update (BHX departure 29/5 with TUI to MLB) …

Tried the day before bag drop and wasn’t allowed as it was a US flight. Fair enough really.

Decided to hit checkin about 30mins earlier than the 3hrs beforehand just in case, needn’t have bothered.

Took about 40mins to get through checkin (4 flights being checked in)

Security was in fairness a very long queue - again took about 45-60mins to snake though and was moving almost throughout the full distance.

Departure lounge wasn’t too busy - contra to stories about fights for seats and massive queues for every outlet.

The Aspire lounge was empty - probably 10-12 people tops in it excl staff.

Very easy journey tbh and no big deal and certainly nothing to stress about

I'm going to be honest & say I 1hr 30-40m to get from kerb to cleared security doesn't sound great. Whilst you clearly had plenty of time so weren't stressed I would have steam coming out of my ears with that!! (But then I do start getting stroppy when it exceeds 20mins!)

If you’ve 3 and a half hours in hand, like Alorotom, why would 1 and a half hours cause you get stressed up? I’ve had many flights stress me out over the hears but entirely due to not being able to get my wife out of the front door.

Because 1 1/2 hrs standing in queues to drop some bags & get through security is insane.

[Harry H]

The trouble they've created though is that with the old recommendation you had two hours worth of passengers in the airport at any one time. Now we've got 4hours worth, so twice as many people milling about as before.

No wonder there's chaos.

[Muddle238]

MarkJS said:

Much of what you say has been well known/common knowledge for months now. But IMO, it doesn’t excuse airlines from letting their customers think they are flying when they are not - taking actual Covid infections out of the equation, an airline should know how many staff it will have available to use at any given time, present & in future. It also doesn’t excuse airport from accepting flights in or out that they can’t deal with for the very same reasons.

Much of it is bad management.

Re. cancelling flights while passengers are at the gate/onboard, I agree. That is bad form and certain airlines have been publically named and shamed for doing so.

However, it's far too easy to simply blame the airlines/airports and say "they should know". That's a far too simplistic view and doesn't acknowledge the hundreds of layers of resources that go into making a single airline flight actually happen. Much of the disruption is attributed to Covid, not actual infections, but the disruption that the entire industry experienced throughout the pandemic. The government response to Covid in terms of air travel was to effectively shut it down. This rather threw a large spanner in the works for airports and airlines. Then, as HMG announced systems (such as the traffic light system) to enable commercial air travel to start operating again, there were countless and repeated U-turns made by HMG, with airlines themselves only learning of changes at the same time as joe public. This made the initial post-Covid recovery exceptionally difficult for airlines to accurately plan a re-training program for each pilot, crew member, member of ground staff, operations, crewing and so on. Airlines carry huge amounts of inertia; normally they tick along just fine but suddenly cease operations for a long period of time and it absolutely throws everything out the window, taking huge amounts of planning and resources to get it back online again. If everything else ran smoothly, you'd be fairly certain of available crew numbers at any given date. However, aviation is dynamic and there are countless external factors that can rear their ugly heads and ruin your best laid plans with little advance warning. For example...

The recent fuel depot protests affected delivery of Jet A1 fuel to some UK airports. Some airports had to start rationing fuel for aircraft, which is slightly awkward if your aircraft requires 15 tonnes of fuel to go to Cyprus, but you're rationed to just 10 tonnes, that flight now needs to make an unscheduled fuel stop along the way in order to reach it's destination. The addition of an extra sector and the additional duty time means that crew may now be out of hours for the following duty, the next day. Multiply this across multiple flights and therefore multiple crews, over multiple days or even weeks (I can't remember how long the most recent fuel shortage lasted for) and you end up with crews experiencing huge amounts of disruption which takes time to iron out.

Again, recently due to ATC staffing shortages, one airport was closed for a 2-hour window overnight. However, all the flights scheduled to land within that window had to be delayed so that they'd arrive after it reopened, again pushing up the disruption caused to airlines and crew. For example, the airport may have only had a single Ambilift available for the whole airport, so you land at 0330 but then have to wait for an hour and a half to disembark all passengers. That's not the airline's fault, nor the airport. But that extra hour and a half causes FTL delays that aren't the fault of the crew, the airline or the passengers.

As mentioned previously on the thread, there have been some serious delays for getting the airside security pass for new crew, due to issues with the companies who are responsible for referencing and making sure your new crew member isn't going to pose a security threat to aviation. A delay in the pass means less crew operational than planned, again, outside the control of airlines.

So while it's easy to blame airlines or airports, the issues affecting commercial aviation at the moment go far deeper than what's lurking about in the media, commercial aviation involves hundreds of organisations to play their part but right now, many of those organisations are facing difficulties and ultimately it's the airline at the end of the day that looks bad. Dnata? OCS? Mitie? Gate Gourmet? NATS? MAG? Menzies? Swissport? All outside the control of airlines but all have a pivotal impact on whether an airline can run it's schedule efficiently or not.

It's no use saying "the airlines/airports should know", they know only too well.

[captain_cynic]

Muddle238 said:

So while it's easy to blame airlines or airports, the issues affecting commercial aviation at the moment go far deeper than what's lurking about in the media, commercial aviation involves hundreds of organisations to play their part but right now, many of those organisations are facing difficulties and ultimately it's the airline at the end of the day that looks bad. Dnata? OCS? Mitie? Gate Gourmet? NATS? MAG? Menzies? Swissport? All outside the control of airlines but all have a pivotal impact on whether an airline can run it's schedule efficiently or not.

It's no use saying "the airlines/airports should know", they know only too well.

I've been saying for ages, the big problem isn't with the airlines or even that much with the airports, it'll be the suppliers and logistics companies that will be the bottleneck. During the pandemic, airlines and some airports received huge amounts in public aid, these companies hardly got anything so they ultimately had to let people go and scale back operations.

But you can't scale up nearly as fast.

I'm sure this will get sorted in time though.

[Largechris]

98elise said:

Shnozz said:

Masiv said:

I flew from Manchester a few years ago and it was dreadful. Massive queues at security and was a total st show. I would rather pay 100 more for a flight from somewhere else.

Trouble is it seems this is a nation wide issue.

I don't think it is. I've flown twice from Stansted recently and not had any issues. At the same time Birmingham and Manchester have had huge queues.

Stansted last Thursday was bad - queue out of the terminal for inbound passport control, most of the E gates not open, took more than an hour.

Yes, yes, border agency etc. but there were certainly 3 airport female employees there, flapping, think they have to have a certain amount of supervision per e gate, which they clearly didn't have the staff for.

Embarrassing.

[nebpor]

Reading the news to see how it was today - Bristol and Dublin look like an absolute shambles. The problem is compounded by people being scared they will miss their flight, thus turn up ever-earlier. We can't blame them for that -the airports themselves need to get clearer and quicker in their communications to joe public, otherwise joe public will make their own mind up as to what time they will arrive at the airport

Insightful post on the logistics required to complete a plane journey. I spent a bit of time working with Qantas at their HQ and sitting in the middle of their operation was mind-boggling. IIRC if they had 1000 planes (made up number), 800 would be in the air at any one time - that was what they were juggling. Just making sure that when each plane landed that it was going to be safe, there would be fuel, parts, catering, crew, hotels, etc and everything else, was crazy, and could change by the literal hour due to the geopolitics of it all ..... wow ... and I was just observing this happen, I was there doing something else!

[DeejRC]

Brussels was also struggling v badly yesterday.

Whereas I’ve done LHR- Got, GOT - STO, STO - LHR, Exe - Jer and Jer - Exe in the last 2 weeks without any probs at any of the above airports wrt this stuff. The only trouble was having to wait 90mins at Exe due to a malfunction with the plane and a replacement sorted, but that was an actual technical fault as opposed to a staff and ops fault.

In theory I have LHR - SFO and back next week. Will see how that goes.

I suspect it’s a bit pot luck atm.

[Welshbeef]

So problems in UK ongoing and overseas (EU only so far)

[Welshbeef]

Oh FFS

https://news.sky.com/story/british-airways-check-i...
British Airways check-in staff at Heathrow to be balloted for strike action in pay dispute

[bodhi]

Welshbeef said:

Oh FFS

https://news.sky.com/story/british-airways-check-i...
British Airways check-in staff at Heathrow to be balloted for strike action in pay dispute

Didn't realise there were any check in staff left at Heathrow? Flying out of there a couple of weeks ago, there was one person who asked if I had the Verifly App then directing me to an automated bag drop lane.

Similar in Gatwick last week.

[ClaphamGT3]

Deep Thought said:

We are flying from the UK to Barcelona and back in July, and again from the uk to Majorca and back in September.

We have Irish Passports and UK passports.

It sounds like there would be significant advantage by travelling on the Irish passports?

Indeed - can't remember the last time I used my UK passport for a flight to an EU country

[Alorotom]

GT03ROB said:

DaveGrohl said:

GT03ROB said:

Alorotom said:

So to update (BHX departure 29/5 with TUI to MLB) …

Tried the day before bag drop and wasn’t allowed as it was a US flight. Fair enough really.

Decided to hit checkin about 30mins earlier than the 3hrs beforehand just in case, needn’t have bothered.

Took about 40mins to get through checkin (4 flights being checked in)

Security was in fairness a very long queue - again took about 45-60mins to snake though and was moving almost throughout the full distance.

Departure lounge wasn’t too busy - contra to stories about fights for seats and massive queues for every outlet.

The Aspire lounge was empty - probably 10-12 people tops in it excl staff.

Very easy journey tbh and no big deal and certainly nothing to stress about

I'm going to be honest & say I 1hr 30-40m to get from kerb to cleared security doesn't sound great. Whilst you clearly had plenty of time so weren't stressed I would have steam coming out of my ears with that!! (But then I do start getting stroppy when it exceeds 20mins!)

If you’ve 3 and a half hours in hand, like Alorotom, why would 1 and a half hours cause you get stressed up? I’ve had many flights stress me out over the hears but entirely due to not being able to get my wife out of the front door.

Because 1 1/2 hrs standing in queues to drop some bags & get through security is insane.

It is insane, but it being the biggest holiday week of the year so far (and potentially all 2022 due to the bank holidays) I don’t think it was bad, it certainly could have been much worse.

I normally get so annoyed if I’m waiting 15mins to get through security at LHR but this was really chilled and the queue wasn’t static, it moved the whole time, so there was perceived progress even though it was a massive snake.

[MarkJS]

Muddle238 said:

MarkJS said:

Much of what you say has been well known/common knowledge for months now. But IMO, it doesn’t excuse airlines from letting their customers think they are flying when they are not - taking actual Covid infections out of the equation, an airline should know how many staff it will have available to use at any given time, present & in future. It also doesn’t excuse airport from accepting flights in or out that they can’t deal with for the very same reasons.

Much of it is bad management.

Re. cancelling flights while passengers are at the gate/onboard, I agree. That is bad form and certain airlines have been publically named and shamed for doing so.

However, it's far too easy to simply blame the airlines/airports and say "they should know". That's a far too simplistic view and doesn't acknowledge the hundreds of layers of resources that go into making a single airline flight actually happen. Much of the disruption is attributed to Covid, not actual infections, but the disruption that the entire industry experienced throughout the pandemic. The government response to Covid in terms of air travel was to effectively shut it down. This rather threw a large spanner in the works for airports and airlines. Then, as HMG announced systems (such as the traffic light system) to enable commercial air travel to start operating again, there were countless and repeated U-turns made by HMG, with airlines themselves only learning of changes at the same time as joe public. This made the initial post-Covid recovery exceptionally difficult for airlines to accurately plan a re-training program for each pilot, crew member, member of ground staff, operations, crewing and so on. Airlines carry huge amounts of inertia; normally they tick along just fine but suddenly cease operations for a long period of time and it absolutely throws everything out the window, taking huge amounts of planning and resources to get it back online again. If everything else ran smoothly, you'd be fairly certain of available crew numbers at any given date. However, aviation is dynamic and there are countless external factors that can rear their ugly heads and ruin your best laid plans with little advance warning. For example...

The recent fuel depot protests affected delivery of Jet A1 fuel to some UK airports. Some airports had to start rationing fuel for aircraft, which is slightly awkward if your aircraft requires 15 tonnes of fuel to go to Cyprus, but you're rationed to just 10 tonnes, that flight now needs to make an unscheduled fuel stop along the way in order to reach it's destination. The addition of an extra sector and the additional duty time means that crew may now be out of hours for the following duty, the next day. Multiply this across multiple flights and therefore multiple crews, over multiple days or even weeks (I can't remember how long the most recent fuel shortage lasted for) and you end up with crews experiencing huge amounts of disruption which takes time to iron out.

Again, recently due to ATC staffing shortages, one airport was closed for a 2-hour window overnight. However, all the flights scheduled to land within that window had to be delayed so that they'd arrive after it reopened, again pushing up the disruption caused to airlines and crew. For example, the airport may have only had a single Ambilift available for the whole airport, so you land at 0330 but then have to wait for an hour and a half to disembark all passengers. That's not the airline's fault, nor the airport. But that extra hour and a half causes FTL delays that aren't the fault of the crew, the airline or the passengers.

As mentioned previously on the thread, there have been some serious delays for getting the airside security pass for new crew, due to issues with the companies who are responsible for referencing and making sure your new crew member isn't going to pose a security threat to aviation. A delay in the pass means less crew operational than planned, again, outside the control of airlines.

So while it's easy to blame airlines or airports, the issues affecting commercial aviation at the moment go far deeper than what's lurking about in the media, commercial aviation involves hundreds of organisations to play their part but right now, many of those organisations are facing difficulties and ultimately it's the airline at the end of the day that looks bad. Dnata? OCS? Mitie? Gate Gourmet? NATS? MAG? Menzies? Swissport? All outside the control of airlines but all have a pivotal impact on whether an airline can run it's schedule efficiently or not.

It's no use saying "the airlines/airports should know", they know only too well.

I do understand many of the points you are trying to make and would like to agree with on all of them - but I can’t. I still cannot accept that an airport is able to say that ‘a particular day was busier than they expected and that’s the reason they could not cope’. Surely an airport knows exactly how many passengers will be flowing through it during (say) a 3 hour period based on the number of aircraft it has booked (and taking money from) to sit in its tarmac - that’s their business. If they have too many bookings that they can deal with based on the number of staff they have online, that of course would unfortunately lead to cancelled flights if they cannot cope. Yes, I’m sure there are many other more complex layers as you mention and it must be extremely tough for you guys who are fighting to do your best every day, but in the particular instance I’ve just mentioned is an airport being utterly inept (& dishonest IMO) and they shouldn’t have a licence to operate.

I’m certainly not picking a fight with you and hope you/the other good people have an easier life soon. For balance, I flew out of the UK with Jet2 last Thursday and they were nothing short of perfect. I haven’t got back yet but fingers crossed for the return trip.

[Blackpuddin]

If they paid enough wages they wouldn't be having such trouble recruiting staff. They won't do that so travellers pay in money, time and stress. Not sure why they can't entice more new staff by offering a hiring bonus eg double salary for first three or six months.

[lrdisco]

lrdisco said:

Just going to Malaga airport. Hoping it’s not too bad.

It took us 40 minutes from dropping our hire car off to getting through security.
Not too bad at all.

[Tyre Smoke]

Blackpuddin said:

If they paid enough wages they wouldn't be having such trouble recruiting staff. They won't do that so travellers pay in money, time and stress. Not sure why they can't entice more new staff by offering a hiring bonus eg double salary for first three or six months.

Jesus wept. And where do you think the funding for this 'double pay' will come from? And don't you think that Karen, who has worked for the company for five years is going to demand as a more experienced and trained operative, should be getting the same as the person she is training to do her job?